Moss drip wall

[gjcarew]

This is a build I've been wanting to do for months, but just got around to putting together this weekend. First off, here's the build (at least as far as I've gotten).

My inspiration was a moss wall I saw on the Epiweb website. Epiweb is an inorganic material used for rooting epiphytic plants. Ive attached a pic of the inspiration below.

I'm more known for aquascaping, but I really love everything around water as well, be it wet rainforests, riparian areas or mountain brooks.  So this drip wall really inspired me. I had a tank at work that hadn't had a rescape in a year or so, so I decided to try my hand at it. 

For a backing material, I used 1/4 inch foamed PVC. I used PVC cement to glue it up so that the front piece overhang the tank, so there would never be any leaks. 

I then siliconed three of Aquarium Co-op's coarse sponge pads to the board. I don't know if this will work, but it seems similar enough to epiweb and it's way cheaper and easier to find.

The water would get to the top of the wall with the airline tubing attached to a small pump. I punched holes in the airline tubing to create the drip emitters.

I then cut in a groove around the sponge material and stuck the airline tubing in for a finished look. Here it is on the tank, before planting

After that, I just had to hang my moss walls.

The tank is a low tech, pond style tank with some of Dean's medaka.

This is very much an experiment in that I don't know if the moss will survive. It was in poor shape as I took way longer than expected to get this planted, so the moss has been in a bag for about two months.

The holes in the airline tubing were not all straight, but in the end I don't know if it matters. The moss has capillary action that spreads the moisture around. If the moss struggles, I'll replace the Aquarium Co-op tubing with some rigid airline with more precise holes.

I'm hoping to plant some small plants on there like ferns and maybe small philodendron. I also need some springtails to prevent fungus (and be opportunistic fish food). This is just the start of the journey!

[Flumpweesel]

Great looking project real little pocket of nature. 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

I have always had good success with moss and sponge so I think you have a very good shot at succeeding. Thank you for sharing @gjcarew. It will be a fun project to follow. 

[lefty o]

i would give pretty good odds of moss working with the sponge. 

[gjcarew]

There a saying in Seattle startup culture that if you're going to fail, fail quickly. So that's what I did.

The christmas moss was too far gone and the drip wall not dripping evenly enough to keep the moss moist. It was smelling kinda funky after a couple days so I took it off to prevent it from fouling the water for the fish.

I built a new dripper out of rigid airline tubing that seems to work better. Rather than Christmas moss I bought some Dusk Moss Mix, which is often used in terrariums. The only downside is that it is gonna be at least a few months before it grows in. It also painted on kinda patchy, but when it comes down to it that is how moss grows in nature so I'm not upset about it.

I lined the entire bottom of the wall with raphidophora hayi, a shingling epiphyte. My hope is it will grow up the sponge backing.

 

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

@gjcarew bummer on the first attempt! I'm sure you'll get it. Just curious, would a plant like Monte Carlo work on this kind of thing?

[gjcarew]

On 12/20/2021 at 12:44 AM, xXInkedPhoenixX said:

@gjcarew bummer on the first attempt! I'm sure you'll get it. Just curious, would a plant like Monte Carlo work on this kind of thing?

There is a decent chance it would. I want to be careful about using super vigorous plants like Monte Carlo, hydrocotyle tripartita, and ficus pumila, since they might take over the wall. I'd first like to see if I can get some moss and slower growing plants to work.

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

I was wondering about it since I recently got some and am debating on whether or not to put it in my tanks since it's prolific- though I'm not sure if it would be in my low tech tanks. You kind of have my mind working for a similar small build but using the Monte.  

[Mmiller2001]

Is this the same material used for your moss wall in your AGA win?

[gjcarew]

On 12/20/2021 at 12:50 AM, xXInkedPhoenixX said:

I was wondering about it since I recently got some and am debating on whether or not to put it in my tanks since it's prolific- though I'm not sure if it would be in my low tech tanks. You kind of have my mind working for a similar small build but using the Monte.  

It's much more manageable in low tech tanks, it really only takes off when it has unlimited access to CO2, such as when it is grown emersed.

On 12/20/2021 at 4:33 AM, Mmiller2001 said:

Is this the same material used for your moss wall in your AGA win?

Yep, same moss. I had it sitting around in a bag in the basement WAY too long.

[Mmiller2001]

On 12/20/2021 at 9:36 AM, gjcarew said:

Yep, same moss. I had it sitting around in a bag in the basement WAY too long.

What frame work do you use in the tank?

[gjcarew]

On 12/20/2021 at 10:33 AM, Mmiller2001 said:

What frame work do you use in the tank?

Basic construction for the backing can be found here. The one change I made from Joe's design is I used green nylon produce netting that I found on a bag of garlic at the store to secure the moss to the needlepoint mesh. I found it WAY easier than the fishing line method, which I've also tried. This is the page from my journal where I set it up.

I haven't tried Cory's method of attaching moss to matala mat (underwater at least). I had serious space constraints so it wouldn't work for me. 

[Biotope Biologist]

You may have to mist the moss too while it's growing in. I know when I brought my moss in for the winter it did not take well to the dryness of my home and immediately started melting. I love low slung tanks and anxious to see how this turns out!

 

Like you said once the moss has matured it can move moisture around via capillary action, maybe this variety will be better suited than christmas moss.

[gjcarew]

On 12/20/2021 at 7:47 PM, Biotope Biologist said:

You may have to mist the moss too while it's growing in. I know when I brought my moss in for the winter it did not take well to the dryness of my home and immediately started melting. I love low slung tanks and anxious to see how this turns out!

 

Like you said once the moss has matured it can move moisture around via capillary action, maybe this variety will be better suited than christmas moss.

This is something called Dusk Moss Mix, which is a mix of chopped sphagnum, dehydrated tropical terrestrial mosses, fern spores, liverworts, and gesneriad seeds. So I don't even know if it will sprout in the first place!

I don't want something that has to be misted, so anything not moistened by the drip wall I'm not even going to try with.  

I thought about getting mosses from outside, but I don't know if the local mosses will do well indoors where there isn't a winter dormancy period. Have you had any trouble with keeping collected mosses alive?

[Biotope Biologist]

Collected mosses are quite hardy I've found. They have a period of dieback then about 2-3 months later they go wild in my experience. I really had to be diligent with keeping them moist as I haven't tried a dripwall yet, although have plans in the future for one. 

 

Since this is going into a tank I might watch Serpa designs video on curing moss collected from outside. I just keep mine in pots so I don't mind the various bugs and worms I track into the house.

 

I also bought some java moss from the coop which I keep terrestrially. Although after it spored it's died back a bit. Not sure what that's about.

[gjcarew]

I was gone for just over a week for Christmas, then my wife got Covid so I had to quarantine another 10 days. Long story short the fish at the office were fed but that's it. Stray particles clogged up the rigid airline tubing, and the background completely dried out. Luckily I'm no stranger to abject failure.

I made a little box for the pump out of coarse filter sponge, hopefully that will keep large particles out. 

Unfortunately that airline hose is hard to clean so the water spread on the wall still kinda sucks. I need to figure out a way to clean it.

I will figure out drip walls if it kills me. If anyone has advice, I'm all ears!

[Patrick_G]

I just got caught up with this thread. I’ve been wanting to do something like this after being inspired by Steve Waldron’s drip wall at Zen. I bet he’s have some advice. 
 

Is that a UNS 60S tank? 
 

[gjcarew]

On 1/18/2022 at 5:08 PM, Patrick_G said:

I just got caught up with this thread. I’ve been wanting to do something like this after being inspired by Steve Waldron’s drip wall at Zen. I bet he’s have some advice. 
 

Is that a UNS 60S tank? 
 

Yeah, it's a UNS 60s. I've been playing with living walls for a few years now. I think Steve gave up on his for the most part now and just lets the ficus pumila grow wild. I asked him about it and he said that it just doesn't work that well-- the nutrient demands of aquatic plants and the nutrient demands to grow terrestrial plants hydroponically are just too dissimilar. 

I've never done a constantly wet drip wall. I hope it works out in the end but it's a pretty unique setup so I just don't know.

[gjcarew]

Pretty much how I feel about this project right now...

 

It's been 5 weeks with no growth. I went and asked a question in a terrarium group, but the gamut of answers I received made it somewhat unhelpful. I suspect that rehydrating then dehydrating the mix did some harm to it.  I suppose as well that the moss mix MIGHT come back, and I just need to wait a while with the new, better spread drip wall.

That said, it's a bit too patchy. There are some sections that are isolated from the dripping because coverage with the chopped sphagnum is not good enough. I'm going to reapply more moss mix and see what happens. I'm also making a backup by just putting some long fiber sphagnum in a bunch of light. I've gotten it to reanimate in the past by doing this, so I'm pretty sure it will work. 

[gjcarew]

Some feedback I got is not to let the moss get saturated, unless it is aquatic moss. So I cut up some Christmas moss, mixed it with a bunch of the Dusk Moss Mix (terrarium moss) and applied it. Good news, a day later and it's still almost fully damp! I'm hoping this means things are on the right track. Unfortunately it might still be another month before I see growth, since I essentially just did another hard reset on this project.

[Mmiller2001]

I wonder if a mist type machine/ sprayer could be used to water regular moss?

Edited February 3, 2022 by Mmiller2001
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[Guppysnail]

On 2/3/2022 at 4:51 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

I wonder if a mist type machine/ sprayer could be used to water regular moss?

I do not know if this will help. I bought a cheap smallish essential oil diffuser from Amazon I plug in I only ever put water in to keep the sphagnum moss in my frogs terrarium healthy and green. It works really well. 

[Torrey]

@gjcarew I was never successful at "wet walls" until I started watching Tanner's videos on SerpaDesign.

What I have had success with is collected mosses in WA growing very well for me. Collect small, quarter sized pieces from the center of a patch, and either put them on soil in your garden or in a potted plant to store, or go ahead and rinse repeatedly until the water rinses clean, and place your rinsed moss samples on activated carbon with a scant covering of water. Either method keeps moss viable, and the latter approach has a bonus of starting to convert moss from riparian to aquatic,  or at least semi-aquatic.

[gjcarew]

@Mmiller2001 and @Guppysnail thank you for the suggestions, an I think that would be a better way to go. Or keeping this in a terrarium. One of my goals though was to keep it minimalistic and completely open. I wanted to be able to touch the moss on the wall. As a result I don't really have a method for spraying/ humidifying built in. If the moss just doesn't grow, I will have to figure out a way to work in a sprayer!

@Torrey I will have to collect some moss next time I'm in the woods and see if this setup will work for it

[Odd Duck]

For a while I set up a 70 gallon tank as a poor man’s vivarium (decades ago, now).  I intended to breed dart frogs in it but never got there.  I did, however, set up an ultrasonic humidifier hard plumbed to pour fog into the tank on a timer using a homemade PVC  “spray bar” with elbows and T’s.  I only used about 6 fog outlets with the goal of having wetter and dryer areas for different types of plants.  Now they use vent and circulation fans with overall higher humidity.

If I was redoing that “spray bar” today, I would pipe down to smaller pipe overall and drill far more holes (instead of depending on open T’s) for a more even wall of fog coming into the tank.  The old spray bar laid on top of the screen top I was using.  For a moss (drip) wall, I would lay that pipe right on top of the foam and have dozens of holes drilled into the pipe at different angles to let fog flow right over the moss and have some fog go right into the foam to keep it moist.  It might not work, but that would be my starting place.

I’ve got a fogger floating in a dish right now keeping my wood as wet as possible in the “new” 100G until I can recover enough from COVID to do my painted on moss slurry.  That was my main aquarium project planned for this week.  🤦🏻‍♀️ 🤷🏻‍♀️ Oh, well.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll have enough energy to do that.  I’m stir crazy, but get up to do the smallest project (zap food) and I’m tired before I sit back down to eat.

Edited February 4, 2022 by Odd Duck