Brackish moss balls

[KenCotigirl]

Hello Mustafa how about some pictures of the brackish moss balls you found growing in your tanks. When will they be added to the petshrimp store for purchase? Since you have plenty of free time have you separated out the orange, clear and blue? Opae ula for breeding? No fair teasing us.

One comment on the pet store. Once you are there, there is not a link to get back to petshrimp.com.

Ken

[Mustafa]

Hi Ken!

The balls grow very slowly unfortunately. They do multiply relatively quickly (i.e. even when small, pieces break off and turn into new mini-balls) but the largest "balls" are the size of small marbles right now. Most of them are the size of peas... If anyone is interested in such small balls, I can try to put some limited numbers online, but I thought maybe waiting until I have larger ones (and more of them) would be a better idea.

As for the various color variations...I wish I could report that various breeding populations have been established and are ready for sale, but, unfortunately, I have not had the time (and space) to actually even start new tanks for them. Now that you reminded me, I'll probably try to gather all the yellow/orange ones and start a small 3 gallon in the living room.

Thanks for the comment on the store. I appreciate it! I have not been updating the store, this forum and the whole website all that much because I have been planning on migrating everything to a completely new software...which has not been happening as fast as I would like it to happen. So...yes, I will try to go ahead and update some things. The link in the store is badly needed, so I'll try to take care of that first.

[hb5280]

I'm definitely interested in the nano moss balls. That is actually what I was searching the Internet for, when I found your site. I have marimo that are marble-sized and I love them. — hb

[AndyH]

I'd definitely be interested in the small brackish moss balls too

[Mustafa]

Ooops...I completely forgot to take and post pictures, Ken. I'll do that in the next few days. These balls have a darker color than most freshwater algae balls I have seen.

[SillyDaddy]

Please send me a note, I would like to get a few snails, an order of micro balls and a full clump of macro-algae into my tank soon.

[Mustafa]

Unfortunately, the moss balls are not for sale right now. For the rest, just go to the store and order them.

As promised, and with quite bit of a delay, here are some pictures of my moss balls (both individual moss balls and tons of them carpeting the tank floor):

[KenCotigirl]

Nice. Not sure what I like better the individual balls or the carpet. Hopefully by summer you will have some available

[SillyDaddy]

Oh, the agony of trying to be patient while waiting for a "potential" product... I am just so not good at this patience thing. (Especially seeing as I have Asperger's. LOL)

[AndyH]

Thank you very much for posting those pictures Mustafa! I really love the way they look. Tightly bound together. And they look great as a carpet too. I can't wait for the possibility of these going up in the store some time

[Mustafa]

I don't like waiting, either. But...they *are* very slow growers. That carpet used to be just a few balls and it took a few years to get to be a quasi-carpet. Those individual balls you see are from that carpet. I seeded other tanks with the balls from the original tank, so, hopefully, over time, other tanks will develop similarly dense ball carpets from which I can then start offering some algae balls to you guys.

It's still fascinating to me how they just appeared...seemingly out of nowhere.

[SillyDaddy]

Don't you need a few "Testers" to help make sure they are going to work in personal tanks with different parameters than your own?

[SillyDaddy]

After a little research I wanted to ask what is the specific salinity of your tanks. Is it possible you have a brackish tolerant Cladophora aegagropila? It may just be entirely possible. If so, I would love to hear more about this. I would like to have a broken sample to test in one of my own tank, then again, I am sure everyone visiting the forums feels the same so I will swallow my wants and just congratulate you on an interesting find.

[shmohney]

Put me down as another person interested in purchasing some of this moss if you decide to start selling it. I don't care if it's real Marimo or not. It's pretty!

[Mustafa]

After a little research I wanted to ask what is the specific salinity of your tanks. Is it possible you have a brackish tolerant Cladophora aegagropila? It may just be entirely possible. If so, I would love to hear more about this. I would like to have a broken sample to test in one of my own tank, then again, I am sure everyone visiting the forums feels the same so I will swallow my wants and just congratulate you on an interesting find.

The freshwater marimo balls are actually Aegagropila linnaei. The name you're using is an old synonym. If my brackish balls are the same species or not, I cannot say at this point. I would have to compare them under the microscope the species key for A. linnaei (and I would have to get a microscope first ). As for testing...well, *I'm* still testing them actually to see how they do in various tanks, but I may send out some random samples soon enough... What's interesting is that the actual marimo balls roll around on lake floors to get their ball shape. My balls don't roll around much, if at all, as there is no current in my tanks. Maybe the shrimp are responsible for the ball shape, by ever so slightly rolling the balls while picking on them. Or...this species of "ball alga" may just grow this way...we'll see.

As for the salinity in my tanks...I don't keep the salinity the same in all the tanks. It varies from anywhere between 1.008 to 1.013. I just tested a random tank and it was 1.013.