Problems with moss

So I absolutely love the look of my java moss, and I appreciate it providing my smallest critters organisms to munch on but it's a total poop collector of a plant. I at one time had my 29 pretty carpeted with the stuff but when I was dismantling the tank to replace it with my metaframe I was horrified of the massive amount of poo that was under it all. I always poked and prodded at it when the vacuum when I was doing water changes but I had no idea that so much poo was being collected in the moss. So in avoidance of this happening again I strapped most of the moss to a stick with some rubber bands and put some on my large driftwood center piece. All moss is at least an inch away from the substrate. Well I decided to do some rearranging and I started to pull out the big stick with moss in it and it's just chalk full of poo, even with the current of the filters blowing on it. It's just driving me nuts. I thought about giving the wood a couple good shakes every other day but the last thing I wanna do is send a whirlwind of poo at my animals. I mean can you imagine being a happy little fish or shrimp and swimming happily when all of a sudden you're engulfed by a cloud of poo?

Does anyone else have this problem? How do you handle it?

Haha, yes that sounds very familiar! I tried a few different things and none of them worked so I solved the problem by getting rid of it. (I'm not very good with most plants!)

If anyone has a solution for this, I'd like to know as well. I do like the look of the java moss when it's new and clean.

My moss always looks clean and is constantly pearling but it sure has some dirty little secrets...

And it's like you can't shove the gravel vac into it that much otherwise you'll suck it all up. I had had it in one of my 5gals at one point and quickly realized it was a big no no with that small amount of water.

Yep. I have the problem too. My solution has been one of two things.

If I am carpeting with moss, I use craft canvas to attach the moss to, and then just lightly cover it with my substrate to hide the canvas. Then, when I do my water changes, I can pull the 'carpet' up, shake it out into the outgoing water, and put it back without too much hassle, or uprooting the plant.

I also attach the moss to rocks/logs small enough to pull out and do this with.

Or, I just let the moss grow as a large free floating thicket, and simply pull it out and rinse it. This makes for getting bits of moss all over the tank, but I just pick them all out and wad them together before putting them back in.

It was never my intention to carpet, just decided it didn't want to live on a rock anymore I guess Seems like it's more work then it's worth but I can't bring myself to part with it. Planted tanks period seem more work then they're worth. I'm actually in the process of moving my shrimp to a different tank because the one they're in is so thick with plants and wood that I can't see where I'm vacuuming and it's pretty important to see where you're vacuuming otherwise you'll suck up little shrimps. I'm sure they really enjoyed their jungle but I'm sure they enjoy not being flushed either. Just couldn't get their tank clean the way I wanted because I couldn't vacuum where I couldn't see my shrimp.

Prune back your plants. Thing them out. People will trade plant trimmings and culls for equipment. That's how I got most of my plants.

Fyurae, do you remember about how long it took for the moss to attach itself to the rocks? I tried this once for over a month and the moss didn't stick at all. I've since sold that tank, but I'd like to try it again because I like the idea of a mossy rock. The other idea is to put it on sticks to make "trees."

The trees thing is easier because you can just take fully lush moss and tie it on. It requires regular pruning, though.

For the rock, the way that I have had luck doing it (when I want to do it on purpose, that is) is to lay something on top of the ends of a thicket of moss, as if you were holding the moss down. I can't say how long it will take to get it to attach. Something with more texture is probably going to work better, although I have had moss attach itself to a chunk of granite countertop trim in my tank, on the unpolished side.

The first rock I had looked like a chia pet by the end, and that all started from one strand of moss that got trapped on it and latched on for dear life.

I have a moss wall in one of my tanks (29g), a big bunch of floating moss in another, and various bits of moss here and there in a couple of others. I don't gravel vac any of my tanks... in fact I keep a brine-shrimp mesh over my water changer to prevent sucking up any of my tiny critters. I don't seem to get any gunk buildup in my moss, but the biggest fish I own are about 2" long, which is probably why. I have shrimp and snails in every one of my tanks which probably helps break the waste down a bit too.

So, what you need to do is just replace your fish with smaller ones. and add more shrimp and pest snails!

I had only shrimp and snails in one of tanks and smaller fish in the other and it was still horrible. My moss looks perfectly clean until you move it and the tank becomes a whirlwind of poo.

Well, that theory's out.

I wonder why I don't have that problem... how much light do (did) you have over those tanks? I do have one tank with moss in it that collects a ton of gunk on the bottom of the tank that gets stirred up when I move the moss; I suppose it could be coming from the moss itself as well. That's my lowest-light 10g with only 2 9w CFLs over it and I don't use any liquid fertz in that tank like I do the others. The rest of my tanks with moss are high light - from 4.2 - 4.6wpg.

The "whirlwind of poo" just sounds wrong.

I had moss in a lower light tank and it died back drastically. I have some in my high light tank that is doing very well though. I don't seem to have any large collections of waste - just the normal amounts for a community tank.

I attached moss to some tubes I made for the shrimp from plastic canvas by deconstructing a bath scrubbie & using 1 thin layer for the mesh tied onto the tubes. It took a bit for the moss to establish itself. You can't see the mess at all now though.

I like the "trees" idea. I'd enjoy seeing that I think.

VsKitchen wrote:The "whirlwind of poo" just sounds wrong.

I bet the shrimp felt it was wrong... Most of my tanks are under a watt per gallon and the growth of the moss is just fine without ferts. The only time I've had problems with moss dying back is when it was under incandescent bulbs.

I imagine they did.

Interesting about the lights. Mine in that tank is a CFL. I've since moved stuff around and have no plants in that tank.

I'm guessing that higher light helps microorganisms break down the waste better. Or something?

It was my understanding that the light helps the waste matter break down, but that it doesn't help the bacteria to flourish. That the bacteria flourish when the matter is broken down into usable components (usable for bacteria). So it seems to be/need a fine balance - especially when you add in the plants that use the matter as fertilization...