Taiwan moss

angyles

angyles

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Nov 4, 2002
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I recently got two portions of this. When they arrived, they looked great. I distributed them over several rocks, making sure not to spread it too thick, and tied it down with a light fishing line. IT's been several weeks now, and every last bit of it has turned completely brown. it looks dead.

can anyone explain this to me? Is this normal? will it come back?

all my params are at 0, ph 7.0, 2.5 wpg, 78F. I jsut started dosing with flourish excel a week ago and adding in some liquid trace and a little nitrogen (not even enough to make the test change).
 
Excel is known to damage mosses, some more than others. Yours was already adjusting to new conditions. So even at half-dosing, this in combination with really bad timing could be what's doing it. Give the moss good lighting and clean water, it still may recover.
 
so is it normal for moss to go through a rough transition period like that regardless? I added some flame moss at the same time and had no problems with it. this is the first time I've ever dealt with moss at all though.
 
angyles said:
so is it normal for moss to go through a rough transition period like that regardless? I added some flame moss at the same time and had no problems with it. this is the first time I've ever dealt with moss at all though.
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Yes, that's normal. No matter what the conditions are for the first 3-6 weeks when you get moss, it's going to sit there doing absolutely nothing. You need to be real patient with it. Then you'll start to see new growth and from there on, it should grow very well for you.

Also, if you buy moss that's been grown under bright lighting with CO2 and put it into a low-tech tank with low-medium light and no CO2... expect the adjustment period to be towards the 6 weeks period instead of just 2-3 weeks. It's in totally different conditions. Likewise moss that's been taken from a low light/no CO2 condition and has been plopped into bright lights and CO2. It goes both ways.

What you'll also find out now that you have mosses is the overall appearance and growth form is going to look very different from one tank to another. This is another reason it's very difficult to even identify one moss from another just by looking at it.
 
okay good to know! I'll be injection co2 next week if everything goes as planned. sounds like that might be yet another change that does this moss in if it's not dead already. That's okay. I'll just sit on it and see if it does anything over the next month. if it doesn't, I'll toss it and order more and try again :-)
 
angyles said:
okay so now that we're talking about excel...is it bad for marino balls too?
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Marimos are just big globs of algae, so anything that would feed the bad algae in your tank is going to feed moss balls too... which is much preferable since they're way cuter! Still, anything that would destroy algae is going to also have a detrimental effect on marimos.

I don't know how touchy these are with Excel. I would just say the same thing applies - that the key in this is to introduce changing conditions slowly just the same as with different moss varieties. Fast growing plants bounce back really fast because they grow fast. Slow growing plants are going to take longer to adjust.

What I do know for sure is they do well under conditions at both extremes. I've seen that people grow them just fine sitting in a jelly jar with nothing but tap water and ambient lighting on someone's kitchen counter to the full blown aquarium with high intensity lighting with ferts and CO2.
 
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