Christmas Moss Bridge Plant Replacement

[phillips66]

I bought a Christmas moss bridge a few months ago.  It was overcome with algae and I killed the moss trying to get rid of it.  What plant would you all suggest to cover the bare bridge other than moss.  I really like the bridge in my aquarium (it's between two pieces of drift wood) but I think more moss would just end with the same result.  I have extremely hard water (PH of 8.2) so that may be a consideration.  The tank is a 29 gallon with a Fluval Aquasky light on it.

Thank you for any advice.

[Irene]

Hmm, maybe anubias nana petite? Really, any type of rhizome plant you have lying around I'm sure would look great. 🙂

[phillips66]

Thank you.  That's what I was thinking, but I wasn't sure.

[phillips66]

As a follow up question.  I have another bridge in a 10 gallon shrimp tank that is starting to get overrun with algae also.  How would you get the algae down?  I've already turned my light down to 25% and they are on for 10.5 hours a day.  I have three nerite snails in the tank but they don't seem to want to touch the algae growing on the moss.  There are also 4 cherry shrimp, 4 platy fry, and a otto cat but none of them want to eat that particular algae.

[Mr. Ed's Aquatics]

Mystery snails my friend, they rock. I have a tank we call the plant hospital. No matter what kind of algae or how bad shape they start off, within a few days everything but growing plant is gone.

[Alexa]

Java fern would look really great on the bridge too. 🙂

Do you use any type of fertilizer?

[phillips66]

I use Easy Green and Easy root tabs.  I have Easy carbon and some other ferts from Seachem but I don't use them regularly

[Nataku]

Try cutting the light on that tank with the second bridge down from 10.5 hours a day to only 5 hours and see how that does after a week. I often find leaving lights on (even at a lower setting) for too long allows the algae to continue to chug along. 

I like java fern across bridge like pieces of drift wood or rocks, so I bet it'd look great on that coconut bridge too! Especially as the java fern grows in and becomes taller. But if you wanted something to stay lower, the suggestion of anubias nana petite is a good one. That'll stay much smaller than java fern.

[Fish Room Fever]

I agree with cutting it back to 5 hours on the light cycle. That typically does the trick for me. I'm going to have to try out the plant hospital tank. That's a great idea!

As for the bridge, either anubias nana petite or the java fern would look great. It's just a matter of personal preference as mentioned.

[Andy's Fish Den]

Another idea ot consider for the second bridge, get yourself an army of amano shrimp and put them in there. When I worked at a LFS years ago, we would take plants or decorations that had algae on them and throw them in our amano shrimp tank and they made short work of it. Depending on how many shrimp were in the tank, most of the time something covered in hair algae would be cleaned in a day or two.