I bought some beautiful christmas moss from Aquabid - tied it to the driftwood and over the last two weeks it's either picked up brown algae from the initial algae bloom or died and turned brown. The green tips are encouraging, but it's still brown.
I spot treated it with 5ml H2O2 directly with no results and I am dosing 5ml flourish Excel daily to keep the algae in check - for the most part my plants are growing well and the algae is reasonably in check.
Thought it was hard to kill moss
Any advice? If it's dying, I may buy star moss, rip this stuff out and try over?
Be patient with mosses. Green tips are good. If you were directly dosing on the moss thy may account for some of the dieback.
And be careful with the starmoss...if its the stuff from Aquatic Magic on ebay its not a true aquatic moss. A few of us have tried it wishing and hoping since the pictures are soooo pretty....but it just melts away. I think Cavan ID'd it at one point as a bog plant, but can't remember what it was.
I wonder if the Excel is causing problems? I don't know if this is true for all mosses, but the fissidens in one of my nano tanks turned brown for awhile when I was dosing Excel.
Yes, be careful treating the mosses and fissidens. I let the Amanos keep the algae off of them and never dose them directly after learning the hard way that Excel kills them if applied directly.
Julie
37g planted, 11g planted, and three 5.2g planted shrimp tanks.
#1 These things have evolved over tens of millions of years to grow. Our biggest job is to stay out of the way. So relax! I'd cut back on the spot peroxide and excel dosing until your tank stabilizes. Just let things take their time.
#2 As Jen said, green tips are good. Sometimes mosses don't "attach" well when they first come in the mail, and you get green growing tips attached to ratty brown stuff that is just tied to your driftwood. You might want to wait a few weeks, then trim off the green and reattach *that* to the driftwood. But, again, let things grow a while first.
Does excel kill moss?
