Lichen and terrestrial mosses on Tank Rocks?

[SimonC]

So the tenant prior to me left me some amazing lava rocks on my fire escape that until today I had not looked closely at.



They are great, prefect shapes and crevices for planting, shrimp hideaways, caves etc however due to there time spent out on the fire escape, at least 2 years there is some decent nice looking terrestrial mosses and some lichen growing about them.




I plan to use them in a partial emersed/submersed set up with prob 2/3rd of the rock to be submersed with the remaining standing above the water level. Is it ok to leave on this lichen. Should I take it all the to car wash and pressure wash it off? It looks really nice and would be nice if I could just rinse off the excess loose dirt, dust and leave them pretty much as is.

Thoughts or suggestions?







Thanks folks

[hydrophyte]

The lichen will die and rot. I once made the mistake of leaving lichen on some cork that I used underwater. It was only thin pieces but it smelled really bad.