Building a moss growing shelf!

[A Hill]

well it all started out yesterday while at a family birthday party. we where talking about my crazy obsession with moss and selling my stringy moss (family gets a kick out of this) and my dad said... if you where smart you would of asked to get a few racks of 100+ jars to grow little snips of moss out all spring/summer and sell them in the fall. and then my dad and i started talking about a system of tanks that flow into another with a small side sump similer to the style of a mattenfilter. so basically it will be a 5 foot tank devided into 5foot cubes or maybe 8 1ft cubes with deviders going into them so 8 sections 6inches wide per... and then there is an extra foot for a "sump" where there would be some bio media and sponges and filter floss. then a submergibal pump that would pump the water into the tank all the way to the right and the water would flow over the deviders and there would be some circulation that way. for lighting there would be a double 4ft strip light since moss doesnt need much light... i could probably get away with 1 4ft but i want to get the double to be safe.

eventually it will have a heater and some shrimp in the deviders...


so the demensions will probably be,......

5feet long by either 1 or 2 feet wide. and probably around 1foot high every 6-12 inches there will be a solid devider siliconed in and the pump will pump water from the "sump" section on the far left to the first "growing section" on the far right and the water will slowly go thru all of them similer to how an ice cube tray works.

now what i need to figure out is.....

acrylic or glass? i am thinking acrylic.

how thick will it have to be?

how much would it cost.


also here would be the demensions for glass/acrylic pieces for the tank if i did 5feet long by 1x1 foot


ammount _ measurement _ use
3 _ 5ftx1ft _ sides and bottoms
2 _ 1ftx1ft _ ends
10 _ 1ftx10inches _ deviders
2 _ 2.5ftx1ft _ a top to retain moisture

i will also need:

tubing for the pump
sealent for the glass/acrylic
1 bag of filter floss
1 bag or cremaic noodles or sponges im not sure which... maybe both
the light.
1 pump
1 heater

so what does everyone think?

im going to attempt to make a journal for it!

so my two major questions are how thick does the glass/acrylic need to be and which of the two should i use? (glass or acrylic)

my main goal is to make it cost the least so it isnt too much money. but is very effective for the money that is spent.

- fish newb -

[JenThePlantGeek]

I'm not sure I understand WHY you need dividers - why not just have one BIG tank to grow all your moss?

Building your own is seldom cost effective... but if you're looking at going cheaper and using silicone then you'll want to stick with glass. Silicone doesn't stick as well to acrylic and acrylic is generally more expensive.

[A Hill]

Originally Posted by JenThePlantGeek

I'm not sure I understand WHY you need dividers - why not just have one BIG tank to grow all your moss?

Building your own is seldom cost effective... but if you're looking at going cheaper and using silicone then you'll want to stick with glass. Silicone doesn't stick as well to acrylic and acrylic is generally more expensive.

the dividers are to keep the moss seperate... a problem with having more than one moss in a tank is they always tend to somehow get into each other at spots... with a setup like this i could have very similer mosses togeather without confusion since i can like either write on the glass or something so i would know what each seciton had.. also i think im going to eventually put shrimp or pairs of fish in the sections as well and that would help alot since for exaple i would be able to keep cherries and snowballs side by side without any fear of cross breading.

DIY is seldome cost effective, correct but i am looking into a way for this to make it cost effective. i could just buy a bunch of big jars or something but i figured i could try something diffrent... this idea is simler to like how a petstore does their tanks usually.

so it seems glass and silicone is the best way to go? i have used silicone and plexiglass aka acrylic before... but it was in a glass tank making a devider.... what if i did a mix? would that work? say glass tank with plexiglass aka acrylic deviders?

hmm its sad because i have sold gnaster moss in the past and had no problem.... maybe there was one and he didnt want to tell me but just spam me..... for everyone who think i need a spell checker... i'm tierd i didnt really look over what i wrote. if you understand english you can understand it. friday night i drove up to nh with my dad and we got there at 12. got to the amc hut and slept till 6. then packed had breakfast got our packs on and climbed mt.washington... we dont do alot of hiking but we are in good shape. so the first time hiking this year we decided to go up the huntington racine trail its the hardest trail in the white mountains... some parts are like a 5.3 5.2 rock climb we did it with 20-30 pound packs on.... it was hard work and we still had to come down. but very wearth it... there is ALOT of moss up there.... and lets just say some, somehow made their way back home.... then i got about 5 hrs of sleep the that night and got up at 6 to go sailing in 4 foot chop with 20-25 mph winds in a sunfish sail boat which is 14ft long... so yes i do have a reason to be tierd. and have a bit of spelling errors... but i figured it was better to share info and get replies more than it was to worry about grammar. i was least expecting to get spammed.... that i have to say is the first time i have ever got spammed like that on TPT and i am very surprised at that. so lets stop this and hopefully a mod can delete those posts. ohh and thanks for the support gabeszone247 but that also was a bit spammy so also when you do something like that comment on the topic also

so could jen or a mod delete that spam? thanks in advance!

hopefully that answers the questions so far

- fish newb -

[JenThePlantGeek]

Ok, I see - I thought you were just going to grow the stringy moss and not several different species. I'll think on this one some more and get back to you if I have any worthwhile ideas.

[JimmyYahoo]

Heres some good info on moss i came across last night, perhaps it may help in your endeavors...

Moss, Ferns and Cryptogams - GardenWeb

[A Hill]

Originally Posted by JenThePlantGeek

Ok, I see - I thought you were just going to grow the stringy moss and not several different species. I'll think on this one some more and get back to you if I have any worthwhile ideas.

ohh yeah i have sooooo much stringy moss... in the 10g but im going to be doing other mosses.... i have some really unknown mosses that i just collected small ammounts of and cant wait to let the world see

- fish newb -

[A Hill]

Originally Posted by JimmyYahoo

Heres some good info on moss i came across last night, perhaps it may help in your endeavors...

Moss, Ferns and Cryptogams - GardenWeb

looks good! ill have to take some time and check it out!

- fish newb -

[D.gilly]

just a sugestion if you make the tank so that the moss is closer to the surface it will be closer to the light and grow quicker just an idea if you dont understand i mean like how tropica / other plant growers grow mats of glosso and hc ? stupid idea ?

[A Hill]

Originally Posted by D.gilly

just a sugestion if you make the tank so that the moss is closer to the surface it will be closer to the light and grow quicker just an idea if you dont understand i mean like how tropica / other plant growers grow mats of glosso and hc ? stupid idea ?

not a stupid idea i was thinking that also... but then if i made it deeper i could have fish/shrimp breeding in there as well so the extra 6 inches could help alot. this first "shelf" im going to make it going to be the most versitle. i might make another one depending how this one goes... if i make another one completely for moss/ anubis and stuff ill make it more shallow... the other thing is most moss can float so they will be at the top ^_^ if i wanted them to be higher up also i could make a "fake bottom" type of thing with like eggcrate and a piece of plexiglass.

well im off to ship out stringy moss and go to Home Depot to see how much this will cost...... be back in a while

- fish newb -

[A Hill]

well i just went to home depot! they dont sell glass! but they did have plexiglass aka acrylic. here are the prices

36in.x72inx.22in(thickness) = 72.99
24inx48inx.22in = 39.99
30in.x36inx.22in = 3199

there where more diffrent sizes but those where the top three largest

then we got refered to a glass shop up the street by an employee, well lets just say i could of bought a 75g tank at petco for this much...

for what i was looking for... just the sides and bottom... 89.88........... no deviders...

if i got the biggest plexiglass piece it might work since i could get 3 1x5ft cuts and 3 1x1ft cuts,... ends and one devider... then i would need a few deviders... and maybe a top...

or i could look into making a "trough" style thing out of wood and pond liner... but it really stinks because i have this nice vision of the tank....

well i'll have to do some more searching... i'm probably going to another glass store tommarrow before i go to our beach house for labor day... after that the search continues.....

- fish newb -

[endparenthesis]

One container for each kind of moss. They could easily be tupperware (a few bucks for each one).

Keep it simple. If your aim is to profit, then stop trying to think of ways to cut into those profits.

[A Hill]

Originally Posted by endparenthesis

One container for each kind of moss. They could easily be tupperware (a few bucks for each one).

Keep it simple. If your aim is to profit, then stop trying to think of ways to cut into those profits.

sorry i found this funny because this is what my mom suggested. those plasic rubbermade containors probably like 30-40g types that are like $10-20 per. i think im going to do that for the short run. but in the long run build one of these "shelfs" because it seems just too cool.

im thinking for the short run im going to be looking into large plastic containors like suggested by a few people there are many diffrent sizes that are very in expensive. for the few that i put say cherries in i can put a heater in and set it lower like 70F

on the other hand i could also use plastic shoe box sizes for growing things like anubus.

but i still want to look into building one of these shelfs at a good price.

so ALL suggestions needed... as long as they arent insults. even if it sounds crazy.

- fish newb -

[A Hill]

another idea i thought of would be to get a bunch of the 1qt-1g freezer containors and plum them all together with some tubing and have a say 10-20g sump so i wouldnt have to worry about water changes and that type of thing.

right now this seems like the best way to go it should be very cheap and very effective.

if it works i would like to see the rare mosses come down in price in the next two years, i will be looking for a list of mosses soon if it does indeed work.

also with this design i believe if i put big enough pipes to each containor i could house shrimp and give them room to roam a array of containors. i could put mesh over some of the pipes so say there cherries could roam 10 containors, the crs could roam 10 containors, the tigers and bees could roam 10 containors.... and some dwarf crays could roam 5 containors... that type of thing. in the sump i would have a heater and stuff to keep the water in check.

- fish newb -

[TINNGG]

Sounds almost like a betta barracks I found on the web.

<center><b>Luv My Betta</b></center> Homepage

The plastic containers are beanie baby display boxes.

[A Hill]

Originally Posted by TINNGG

Sounds almost like a betta barracks I found on the web.

<center><b>Luv My Betta</b></center> Homepage

The plastic containers are beanie baby display boxes.

wow thats alot of ideas and a great system... but im confused on a few things... are the beany baby boxes drilled? or does the water just flow over.... i might look into beany baby display boxes for the containors but i think im going to connect all the containors with pvc tubing. and have one on the far left have the sump drain which will be somewhat similer to theirs and on the far right the new cleaned water will come up through.


thanks alot for that link tho! its a nice set up they have there!


- fish newb -