Brackish moss balls

[KenCotigirl]

I understand your frustration with the USPS. I purchased some plants from California and had them mailed to NJ. 3 day priority. Well they were shipped to Georgia, 800 miles away, and then put out on a truck for delivery. It took another three days to make it to my house. Luckily the plants were succulents and the delay did not affect them. I am sure the moss balls are just as hardy and will survive the shipping.

Ken

[Mustafa]

Ahhh...for the most part USPS does a pretty good job delivering, but sometimes this kind of stuff happens...unfortunately. In any case, don't worry about the Mossball....it won't care if it's in transit one day or 10 days. Tough as nails.

[Aquarimax]

Thanks for the reassurances, Ken and Mustafa! It arrived today, and looks none the worse for wear. I will place it in my Talk at work when I return in Tuesday. In the meantime, it shall reside in a jar of water from one of my opae'ula tanks.

[Mustafa]

Glad to hear it arrived!

[Aquarimax]

Ok, I put the moss ball in my 10 gallon opae'ula tank yesterday. I really like the way it looks, and I am looking forward to propagating more!

Here is a curious opae'ula investigating it:

[Mustafa]

Thanks for the picture! Be prepared to have patience...these Mossballs take a very long time to bud and grow. You could of course help the process along by ripping pieces off of this mossball and distributing them over the tank, but that would be a shame...it's so nice looking!

[Aquarimax]

Thanks for the picture! Be prepared to have patience...these Mossballs take a very long time to bud and grow. You could of course help the process along by ripping pieces off of this mossball and distributing them over the tank, but that would be a shame...it's so nice looking!

It will help me develop more patience. I may wait until I have half a dozen before I experiment with dividing them...out of curiosity, have you tried that? If you have, did you need to roll the bits up into a ball again, or did they just grow that way?

[Mustafa]

I haven't actually ripped a ball apart, but I did take non-round pieces that were floating around in the tank and threw them into another tank. Didn't roll them or anything. They are small balls now.

[Stalker]

Isnt it regular marimo ball? Aegagropilla grow well and even better in brackish water than fresh one. My seamonkey tank is drying every month completly (with salt crystals forming) and the pieces of marimo i put here are still alive and is growing.

[Aquarimax]

Isnt it regular marimo ball? Aegagropilla grow well and even better in brackish water than fresh one. My seamonkey tank is drying every month completly (with salt crystals forming) and the pieces of marimo i put here are still alive and is growing.

I don't think ID can be certain at this point. However, there are at least two differences from typical Marimo balls:
1. They appear to stay much smaller...approximately marble size.
2. They are much better at staying spherical on their own. From what I understand, "wild" Marimo balls retain their shape to to cyclical water movement, but in an aquarium they rely on periodic shaping by the aquarist. Mustafa's brackish moss balls retain the spherical shape even when they don't get moved at all for long periods.

[Stalker]

The second statement may be an implication of the first. And the first may be a behavior in brackish water.

[Aquarimax]

The second statement may be an implication of the first. And the first may be a behavior in brackish water.

Could be...perhaps some experimentation is in order. : )

[Mustafa]

Although it's possible that my "Mossballs" are the same species as "marimo balls", one would still have to explain how marimo balls got into my Supershrimp tanks. Until about two months ago I had never even owned a marimo ball. I've had my supershrimp mossballs for many years now (about 4-5 years?). I only bought the marimo ball to see how it's similar/different from my mossballs. I got a giant marimo ball plucked it apart into 50+ pieces and spread the pieces in various freshwater shrimp tanks. It's been a few months now and here are my observations as to what the differences are between marimo balls and my mossballs. Although the marimo ball pieces are growing, I still can't see them turning round anytime soon (I'm hoping though...I like these "balls" too). The pieces also attach themselves both to rocks and each other after a while. I had to pry balls apart from rocks and other balls to keep them separate and loose. Some of those attached pieces grow flat on those rocks covering them. That kind of growth (i.e. *not* balls) is described in literature from lots of locations...the ball shape is much rarer. Apparently, even the balls can grow on flat surfaces in a non-ball fashion.

In contrast, my supershrimp mossballs never attach themselves to anything. They are always loose and always round. I'Some can get quite a big bigger than marble size in some tanks, but at that size they look like they're about to bud a dozen smaller balls (which they do). I have not observed any "budding" in commercially available marimo balls. They have also never grown on flat surfaces like marimo balls do (and, yes, they do that even in brackish water like the baltic sea).

I guess I'll have to some day really get a microscope and look at both types of balls under the microscope to see what the differences are. At this point they seem very different...and last I checked marimo balls don't just crystalize out of nothing (and they don't have spores either). If my mossballs are marimo that's exactly what must have happened. Doesn't make much sense.

[Stalker]

I read somewhere that marimo balls can reproduce only in brackish water. Maybe you picked somewhere gamets or spores and the cycle had started in your tank.

[Mustafa]

That would make sense with normal algae...but Aegagropila linnaei (Marimo) does not form akinetes (spores) and only spreads through fragmentation. And they can reproduce/fragment just fine in freshwater given that most of their habitats are freshwater.