New Plants for Planted AquariumsAs everything else in this world evolves, so does the hobby of planted aquariums. This is the forum to discuss new plants for planted aquariums. How to introduce these new plants and the best environments for them to survive.
i have a moss ball and it grows beautifully without any ferts or any special lighting. last month it felt lumpy so i pulled a lump off of it which turned into a baby moss ball! then it grew another lump...so i have 2 baby moss balls growing like crazy. my original moss ball is about 3inches in diameter but it is very hairy looking, like the babies. does anyone else keep these neat plants?
well i have well water so i think that helps with all the minerals and such because i barely have any light like 20watts for a 15gal tank. now i add iron to the tank and i think that really helps these moss balls as they are actually algae and not moss. they are slow growing however. i have had the original moss ball for a year and for a few months it did nothing but now it is growing like crazy, it has more lumps on it!
Where did you get your moss balls (both of you, or anyone that posts after)? And what did you pay? I was looking at getting a few of them sense they seem real interesting. But when propagating, do you just cut the little piece off?
i have also never had any problems with mine. they are in tanks with lots of water movement and so they roll around the tank and keep their shape instead of fluffs growing everywhere!
i got mine at big als in london ontario canada and paid about 5$ or so for it but maybe less, i am not really sure. i do know it wasn't that much.
now mine was a smooth ball when i got it and it stayed that way for about 6months. then it started getting fluffy and lumpy and so i thought i would squeeze it but that didn't help so i remembered that at big als they said "it would shoot little babies off around it" so i pulled at one of the lumps and it came right off in the shape of a little baby ball about 2cm in diameter. the parent ball then almost had a hole in that i could feel but not see so i let it recover for a few more months and then noticed when i squeezed it again that it had another lump which i pulled off. the little balls are really fluffy so i put them in the path of returning water to keep them turning and now they are about an inch in diameter.
i read on another site that people took a parent moss ball and pulled it apart into about 15 or so little babies but i didn't want to wreck my parent ball in case that didn't work but i now know that it would work to do that but i just like to wait until more lumps appear. i don't cut them i pull the lumps off the parent.
here are some pics of my moss ball, sorry about the quality it was in with LOTS of venustus babies! and so the tank is a mess from all the water changes!
Are There two kinds? the fake ones made from algae and the real ones from Japan, which are hard to find, I think they are endangered. I have the algae kind which you can tear off pieces and roll them into a balls in order to make more.
Last edited by creative-fury; 01-26-2007 at 12:12 PM..
yes the japanese marimo balls are protected and they are the same thing as what i have, but they are rare. they must be in moving water to retain their round shape or they grow like carpet. my tanks are a 15gal and 29gal african fry growout tanks so i have way over filtration (a rena filstar xp 2 on 29gal and an aquaclear 30 on the 15) needless to say there is lots of water movement which let the balls roll around the tank. they are firm but not hard and every once in a while they must be squeezed as they collect lots of stuff! especially sand! they are very protected which means now that no one can take the balls out of the lake they are in but i read that people do anyway. they are easy to propegate but not much info on this online. i only found 2-3 sites that had info that fit with my plants the rest was not correct.
Japanese Moss Balls 
Linear Mode
