# Killies Import > Planted Tanks >  Emersed growth setup

## Ghazanfar Ghori

I've recently started to grow a lot of aquatic plants emersed. I find
it very easy, efficient and low maintenance. A few weeks ago I
setup a 2.5g tank with a 50% sand 50% peat substrate. I made it
really moist and then just sprinkled some pellia on one half and
a few fronds of xmas moss on the other. Sealed the tank with plastic
wrap and set it near a window where it would get diffused sunlight.
Today I took a peek in there and things are doing really well.
The pellia has doubled in mass, and the xmas moss has grown a
few inches. encouraged by this, I setup two more identical tanks,
with one devoted to xmass moss and the other to erect moss.
Have any of you tried anything similar?

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## Green Baron

> I've recently started to grow a lot of aquatic plants emersed. I find
> it very easy, efficient and low maintenance. A few weeks ago I
> setup a 2.5g tank with a 50% sand 50% peat substrate. I made it
> really moist and then just sprinkled some pellia on one half and
> a few fronds of xmas moss on the other. Sealed the tank with plastic
> wrap and set it near a window where it would get diffused sunlight.
> Today I took a peek in there and things are doing really well.
> The pellia has doubled in mass, and the xmas moss has grown a
> few inches. encouraged by this, I setup two more identical tanks,
> ...


Ghazanfar 
KL and I have tried growing mosses this way with not much success.  :Sad:  I think one the reasons is many species of mosses will only grow when they have established a foot hold on the substrate; and mosses seem to do better on 'solid' surfaces to sand/soil. Xmas and Erect for example do not do well when left floating in water or grown emersed on sand. Java and Taiwan moss, on the other hand can thrive without any substrate.

Or maybe we did something wrong.. I hope you have better luck growing them emersed.

What I have been successful at is growing mosses on driftwoods in semi-submersed mode.

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## shortman

Ghazanfar,

Do you have any picture or url for your setup?

I saw what Ronnie and Kwek Leong did with the emerse setup. Quite like it that way, I would to learn more from you guys and maybe copy cat the setup.

Thanks

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## Ghazanfar Ghori

> Or maybe we did something wrong.. I hope you have better luck growing them emersed.
> 
> What I have been successful at is growing mosses on driftwoods in semi-submersed mode.


So far the growth Ive seen of xmas moss in the above setup has
been encouraging. I'll take some pictures soon to show you progress
over the next few weeks. It's growing faster than it does submersed
or semi/emersed on wood.

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## bad_boyz

> I've recently started to grow a lot of aquatic plants emersed. I find
> it very easy, efficient and low maintenance. A few weeks ago I
> setup a 2.5g tank with a 50% sand 50% peat substrate. I made it
> really moist and then just sprinkled some pellia on one half and
> a few fronds of xmas moss on the other. Sealed the tank with plastic
> wrap and set it near a window where it would get diffused sunlight.
> Today I took a peek in there and things are doing really well.
> The pellia has doubled in mass, and the xmas moss has grown a
> few inches. encouraged by this, I setup two more identical tanks,
> ...


Hi Ghazanfar. Did you mix the sand and peat togethere or sand on top peat below?

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## Ghazanfar Ghori

I mixxed the peat and sand quite well, but some peat floated
up due to watering and now theres a thin layer of just peat on top.

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## bad_boyz

Where did you but the sand and peat from? How much did it cost?

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## timebomb

> Have any of you tried anything similar?


Ghazanfar,

Yes, I tried something similar. I used plastic tubs with peat inside. The tubs are sealed with lids and the mosses are placed on top of the peat. But the mosses don't grow for us this way. Maybe it's got something to do with the humidity over here. You can see how I did it in this thread.

The only way I can grow them emersed is to put the mosses on a piece of driftwood and keep them moist all the time with water pumped from a powerhead.

Loh K L

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## RonWill

> The only way I can grow them emersed is to put the mosses on a piece of driftwood and keep them moist all the time with water pumped from a powerhead.


Kwek Leong,
Rashid and Choy took some pics of how I experimented growing the erect moss emersed and it can't be any simpler.

Let them upload the pics and you'll throw away that powerhead!  :Laughing:

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## A.Rashid

Here are the pictures...enjoy

This is where the erect moss is housed. Erect moss are place onto the drift wood. Initially Ronnie did tied them up to the drift wood but he found out that after a few days/weeks the erect moss have clinched itself to the drift wood. The drift wood is then placed in a sealed container and every now and then Ronnie will spray them with his "*secret recipe*". That is all that I know and perhaps Ronnie himself will better explain his experiment which have a few of us  :Shocked:  





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and here are the pix of the erect moss

















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and the close up

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## FC

Ronnie,

I would be interested to see how long they could stay grow erected, 8 inch?

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## hammy

I wonder if this will work for all mosses...

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## Ghazanfar Ghori

Well - let me report back with the few days of results.
The erect moss and xmass moss is growing quite well so far.

My setup

2.5G tank
Peat moss
Plastic wrap

I put a 1" layer of moist peat on the bottom of the 2.5G tank.
Took some fronds of the moss and patted them down on top
of the moist peat. I pretty much covered the entire bottom
evenly. Sealed the tank with the plastic wrap to maintain
high humidity and placed it near a window where it would get
diffused sunlight. 
The first few days everything looked pretty bad. It was all brown.
Didn't look good at all. However, I peeked in this morning and
I see hundreds of small little green fronds growing from everywhere.
It seems that there is growth from each 'node'! I'll update with pictures
tonight.

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## Ghazanfar Ghori



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## timebomb

Hi,

Seems like your emersed Christmas Moss is really growing very well, Ghanzafar. I wonder why it didn't work for me? The method I used was about the same as yours - peat in a tub with a lid.

Loh K L

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## Ghazanfar Ghori

Actually those pictures are of erect moss. I wasn't able to get
any decent picture of the xmass moss - my 1.5 yr old son kept 
running off with my flash.

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## RonWill

> I wasn't able to get any decent picture of the xmass moss - my 1.5 yr old son kept running off with my flash.


Ghazanfar, perhaps you should have employed a tripod instead :wink: 

For the erect moss, how long did it take to reach it's present state? In some earlier pictures that Rashid uploaded on my behalf, the erect moss was able to gain footage on the driftwood and spread, in about 3 weeks. Personally I'm impressed by their growth rate, the ease in propagation and this encouraged me to start experimenting with Christmas moss as well (I could never get Xmas moss to grow in a tank!).

Kwek Leong,
I suspect that when Ghanzafar patted down the moss onto the peat, the media was very damp but not soaking wet. My observations tell me that the moss was slow to grow in waterlogged areas of the driftwood. Why that is so, is still unclear to me. 

Also, Ghanzafar's use of plastic wrap was to maintain extremely high level of humidity. You may be using a takeaway container/tub but I suggest you seal off that tiny ventilating hole on the lid and see if it works any better.

A week ago, I kicked off another experiment with a taller piece of driftwood in a 'cling-wrap' covered tank. It has about 2cm height of water and I'm relying on the retained humidity to keep the java moss from drying out (since there's no way capillary action can draw water up 9 inches high).

Prior to 'sealing' the tank, I misted the wood with diluted organic fertilizer (chicken poop). Will update when there's someting to crow about :wink:

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## timebomb

> Prior to 'sealing' the tank, I misted the wood with diluted organic fertilizer (chicken poop).


Chicken poop  :Shocked:  Hmm, so that's the "secret recipe" Rashid mentioned. 

Loh K L

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## Ghazanfar Ghori

I setup that tank on Friday - so from that day till the picture
was taken it was about 5 days. The first 3 days of that things
did not look good at all. All the moss was brown and nasty. I thought
I'd killed it all off. I'll post another picture in a week to compare
growth rates.

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## RonWill

> ...so that's the "secret recipe" Rashid mentioned


oops.... did I let the hen out of the coop??  :Laughing:   :Laughing:  

Kwek Leong, I'm not advocating that you do likewise but it was something I had to try (my curiousity was killin' me). My potted-plants do well when I use organic fertilizer and active compost from my vermiculture, so why not see if emersed moss thrive with it.

Never try, never know :wink:

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## Ghazanfar Ghori

Here are some updated pictures...

Erect moss..





Xmas moss

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## mor b

i just got 7 species of moss , and would like to keep them all. since now its summer here , i wonder what is the max temp i can keep this mosses in the emersed growth? thanks

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## RonWill

Dear What's-your-name "baruch mor",
Welcome to the forum and I think you're the 1st member from Israel.

You didn't mention what the summertime temps are. Here in Singapore, it maxs out around 32ºC and from my experiments, so long as I keep the moss cultures in the shade and covered (to maintain high humidity), the moss will be ok. Keep it out of direct sun, if possible.

Ghazanfar has his mosses on moist peat while mine are laid on driftwoods. There are pics of Taiwan Moss shown in *this post*.

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## mor b

thanks ronwill , the name is baruch mor . 
there is a small community of planted tanks here in israel ,and i hope iy will became bigger n bigger when time passes.
i oreder all my plants from thailand n singapore as i cant find here something interesting. 
here the summer time is a about 30-32 and i have a penthouse so i can put it outside in a plastic box , covered n spay it with water n liquid fertilizer. i will let u know
can i grow all the mosses in this way?
i have singapore, taiwan, erect, jigsaw, willow, giant and weeping moss
thanks

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## FC

baruch mor,

Ok, I see your name here, good. It would be good if you were to include your name in the signature setup (can be found in the "Profile" menu). Have fun here.

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## Salamastre

I hope it is okay to bump old threads.

This thread is very interesting. I grew gourmet mushrooms for a couple of years, and became somewhat of an expert in keeping relative humidity stable anywhere between 80% and 100% with very simple and cheap setups.

For small tanks, if using the driftwood method, the best method is to put a 4cm layer of Perlite on the bottom, and add water so that half of the perlite remains emmersed. Put the pieces of driftwood on top. Perlite will wick up water, and it has such a high surface area, thet RH will reach 100% in a sealed container in less than an hour. If that humidity is too much, add more water. The less perlite that remains emmersed, the less humidity.

If using peat/sand in a small tank, something that would work (works with mushrooms using compost instead of peat), is to separate 1/4 of the floor area, gluing a small 5cm high divider to the floor. Fill the 3/4 area with the peat/sand, and the 1/4 with perlite.

For large containers, like a 80 liter Rubbermaid or bigger, put the driftwood or the peat/sand inside the container, and put an open glass jar 3/4 full with clean water and an airstone inside the container. Run an airline from an airpump outside the container to the airstone. Seal the box. The bubbles in the jar will create a very fine mist, and raise the humidity very fast. To control the humidity, you can open a little bit the lid or drill a few holes. I do not like the noise of an airpump, I will save $ for one of those piezoelectric ultrasonic foggers that they use for amphibian setups and cheeesy fountains in nightclubs. 

As soon as I get my hands on a camera i will show pictures.

I hope this is of help.

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## timebomb

It will be great if you can show us some pics, Salamastre. I've never heard of perlite. I googled the name just now and I think I may be able to find this rock in some of our nurseries. Thanks for sharing.

Loh K L

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## RonWill

> I've never heard of perlite


Perlite is a soil conditioner, usually located along the same isle with vermiculite, which works (more or less) as how Fernando described.

Better to check out the larger nurseries like Far East Flora etc.

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## Salamastre

I don´t have a digital camera, i'll try to get some pictures ASAP.

Perlite is basically volcanic glass foam, crushed to small spehers (1mm aprox). Imagine fine filter sponge that became crystalized. It has millions of tiny pores, which gives it an incredible large surface area, an the ability to wick water by capillarity. 

Here you can only get it in large quantities, but you can substitute for anything inorganic that will wick water and let it evaporate, like crushed pottery, pummice rock, cooked clay balls, etc...

In my experience, vermiculite will not work as well, vermiculite absorbs a lot of water, but does not let it evaporate that easily, and with time tends to compact into a brown mush.

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## foxwagon

> I mixxed the peat and sand quite well, but some peat floated


 Well that is definatly a differant way of doing it, not good, not bad....just differant.

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## greenmiddlefinger

I'd like to know how the conversion back to aquatic form is. 

This seems like a great method for growing more moss.

From experience though, some plants really die back during transition-period. This would not be that helpful if most of the moss dies when one tries to switch back (unless you just want x-mas moss as a terrarium plant).

Anyone know how they do on the aquatic-transition?

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## RonWill

> Anyone know how they do on the aquatic-transition?


 Steven, I grow most of my moss emerse on driftwoods and when I see a nice spread or when the moss are well attached, I'll transfer them into my tanks to grow further. Works both ways, ie. reversing from aquatic to emersed form. Just keep them very moist.

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