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Growing Mosses

im looking fr a moss that stays quite short and will bush out.

Thanks for all the information Matt. Very helpful.

Cheers Gordon.
 
Creeping moss, madagascar moss. Both of these will 'creep' without growing 'taller' at all.
Technically Fissidens keeps growing taller and taller, but at such a slow pace I'd class it as a 'stay short' moss.

A lot of mosses change growth pattern depending on how they are placed. So if you put them on a flat horizontal and keep trimming them your more likely to get the growth pattern your after.

Creeping is regularly available from here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6460&start=0&hilit=moostruhe

Madagascar is not readily available, I have given away about 6 portions on pay it forward on here over the last 2 years (it grows v slowly), but yet to see it being offered up again here (yet!). and before several people pm me - I do not have any spare!
 
Cheers Matt will keep a look out for the Creeping moss and Madagascar moss in that link, does not appear to be any for sale on there at the moment. But just tempted to try any moss to be honest and see how it grows.

Cheers Gordon.
 
You won't see madagascar very often, as only a handful of hobbyists have it, and it grows so slowly.
Creeping pops up on that site regularly enough though.

Trying any moss and see how it goes is a good attitude. When you have enough of a species you can always post up cuttings to swap for another one 🙂
 
I just saw this got made a sticky which is really nice.

I also got some pm's asking nicely for me to write this up as a proper article. So will put it back on my list (I clean forgot I had said I would do it before). Life is pretty busy at the moment though, so whilst I have good intentions, I make no promises.

Random tip - when tying mosses to mesh\stone\hardscape... chop the moss into little pieces first. 1 or 2cm long. Then tie it down. It seems wrong hacking it up, but it encourages more growth. When you get loads of little growing tips pop up trim it really close. Repeat a couple of times. Then you get a really dense patch of moss.
 
Is it emersed or submersed?

If it is submersed already, then just chuck it in.

If it is emersed....
I tend to still just chuck it in and see what happens as it transitions.
If it is a rare moss my current approach is to leave the majority of it emmersed, take a small portion off of it, and then just chuck that in a tank and see what happens.
If it then dies, I will take another small portion of it and raise the water level just slightly. This is so that most of the emmersed growth can keep going, but there is enough water so that some submersed growth can form from it. Then when the submersed growth is substantial enough move that into a tank.

Please do not take my approaches as gospel though, I am sure there are lots of different methods that will work 🙂
 
Hello a1Matt

at risk of stealing this thread, I have a question: I have triangle moss growing in my tank (EI, CO2, HOT5), as well as a pad put in a jar sitting in the sun. Contrary to my expectation, the single pad is doing much better than the one in the tank. New growth is visibly fresh green.. Not that I keep it in sun all day, only about 3-4 hrs.. but I do change the water often. No added ferts etc..

Why is this so?

thanks & apologies for putting the question here...

-niru
 
a1Matt said:
Is it emersed or submersed?

If it is submersed already, then just chuck it in.

If it is emersed....
I tend to still just chuck it in and see what happens as it transitions.
If it is a rare moss my current approach is to leave the majority of it emmersed, take a small portion off of it, and then just chuck that in a tank and see what happens.
If it then dies, I will take another small portion of it and raise the water level just slightly. This is so that most of the emmersed growth can keep going, but there is enough water so that some submersed growth can form from it. Then when the submersed growth is substantial enough move that into a tank.

Please do not take my approaches as gospel though, I am sure there are lots of different methods that will work 🙂
Click to expand...

Submersed, but I've only just started it. It's java moss.
 
niru said:
Hello a1Matt

at risk of stealing this thread, I have a question: I have triangle moss growing in my tank (EI, CO2, HOT5), as well as a pad put in a jar sitting in the sun. Contrary to my expectation, the single pad is doing much better than the one in the tank. New growth is visibly fresh green.. Not that I keep it in sun all day, only about 3-4 hrs.. but I do change the water often. No added ferts etc..

Why is this so?

thanks & apologies for putting the question here...

-niru
Click to expand...

I think its a good place to pose the question 🙂

Moss behaves as other plants in that the growth is driven by light > co2 > ferts.

However the co2 requirement is usually very low, so it is not necessary to add it, but when I do I find the growth is accelerated.

The fert requirement of moss is also very low, and I have found adding more does not make any noticeable difference. If you change the water often, then the fresh tap water usually contains sufficient ferts.

So, the only logical answer I can think of is that the jar is getting more light and that is driving the growth faster. Even if the tank has higher light, the moss might not be getting more light within the tank.

This is all just casual observations, I've not done any proper testing or anything like that. Also note that different mosses behave differently. For instance some species do not do very well submersed (not triangle moss that does fine!), so in that instance co2 injection can make the difference between the moss surviving or not underwater.

I'd always check other factors as well. The two that spring to mind are; is the moss getting dirty and is something eating it.
 
Is it normal for it to pearl like this?

276111.jpg

Never bloody pearls in my tank :evil: Hadn't changed the water for a couple of days in this pic BTW.

Got xmas, willow, taiwan and weeping all doing well (but slow, north facing window). The coral pelia, however, appears to have algae or something on it. Didn't when I put it in the pot. Unfortunately too small to take a clear photo of but might show here:

276112.jpg
 
I get a few quesitons via pm about mosses.
So I am going to start reposting them and replying to them here, so that the knowledge is always shared around.


kellyboy47 said:
...how long in your opinion does it take for mosses to start growing well as I have both Taiwan Moss and Xmas on mesh. I also have some Riccia on mesh and its early days for all of them but just thought I would ask. My Juwel tank is 'Community' and I use T5 lighting and I dose with APF Plant Nutrition and EasyCarbo if that helps at all :!:
Cheers
Trev
Click to expand...

In a liquid carbon enrished tank with taiwan, xmas and Riccia I'd expect there to be enough growth that you can see it within a week or two. three at most.

The new growth on Riccia does not have a different colour, but on the taiwan and xmas you can see new 'tips' are a lighter green colour and easy to spot.

If you want the riccia to grow quicker, float it on the surface (so it has access to atmospheric co2). (As it is on a mesh, maybe just trim the mesh and let the trimmings float to the top. You can 'hold' them in one place on the surface with a strategically placed loop of airline tubing.)
 
Thanks for bumping this thread Matt, and for putting together so much fascinating information. Great read.

I should really look at some different mosses. I really love the Xmas moss I got a few months back, not so keen on the java moss that I tried... it never looks as healthy (always straggly and a much less vibrant green), but then its lower down in my tank and possibly shaded by other plants.
 
Java moss is definitely a stragglier moss.
But get it growing healthily in a dense clump, and you get lovely wavy upright growth.
(It is at times like this that I wish I had a camera other than on my phone, so that I can capture a pic to show you.)
 
incredibly sophisticated, and already reported! They have taken a post paulo wrote a couple of years ago as the basis of their text.
 
Have a search, all the spammer posts are in the right areas, with specific content. It is really good, very impressive how far the posting spammers have came. They must have some sort of content searching, so that they will match the sections of the forum to the content. Possibly they have indexed the whole forum, great tool for social engineering, thread spoofing (as we post to twitter directly) and redirection of possible url's.

This kind of skill is either russian or chinese, not much in europe or the US of this calibre.

Quite exciting really. 🙂
 
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