Moss ID help requested...

[ChadO]

Hello!

 

I have two mosses that have been sold to me as rose moss.  Both are doing very well in my CRS tank in the cooler water, but they are clearly not each rose moss.  Or, if they are rose moss, we must be looking at different varieties.

 

I apologize for the less than ideal picture.  If needed, I can trim a small piece of each and take pictures with my macro lens.  I wanted to use my non-macro lens so folks could see both mosses as they are side-by-side in the tank. For supposedly being the same moss, they almost couldn't grow more differently.  The one on the left is quite "fluffy" and "bushy" while the one on the right grows very compact.  Both are pretty decent growers in cool water.  I have the one on the right in multiple tanks, and the one on the left in just this tank.  When I got the one on the left, it was essentially on it's death bed.  I dropped it in the tank and figured might as well let the shrimp feed off and get what they can from it, and then I'll just pitch it later.  Much to my surprise, with no fertilization, just straight living in a 73 degree shrimp tank, and it bounced back.

 

Again, apologies for the picture, if we need better ones, I am happy to oblige.

 

Thanks,

Chad

[Amyers22]

I don't know much about mosses, but I really like the way the one on the left looks. Very pretty!

[Greenteam]

Left looks like Giant Willow & right looks like rose moss.

 

I have both I can show you pictures of mine to help you ID them.

[RyeGuy411]

The one on the left is most likely a Fontinalis moss (willow) the one on the right is similar to rose but is gowing much flatter than I have ever seen rose moss grow. It is probably related to rose so in the Jungermania family. With a close up picture of the structure im sure we could make a better ID.

[ChadO]

OK, I had the camera out the other day, and did a couple things.  I used a some long plant tongs to pull a sample of each moss, and then I took some close-up pictures.

 

The one listed as Moss1 is the moss on the left in the first picture.  The one listed as Moss2 is the moss on the right.  Hopefully, these better pictures, combined with the first one will give a better perspective.  I pulled enough pieces on Moss1 to start another 4 mesh squares as I hope to really get that one rolling.  The shrimp are constantly all over it.

[shrimpybuisness]

I just zoomed in on the moss and OMG you must be doing something right with that many Babies lol keep it up!!!

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[ChadO]

Thanks!  They are doing well in that tank.  What is so funny to me, is that whole tank only exists because they were "extras" from the CBS hatches.  Their history is that I bought SSS CBS shrimp from a seller on TPT a while ago.  I put those CBS shrimp in a tank of their own so that I could have a dedicated CBS tank.  Well, they grew and reproduced, and one day I noticed i had a few CRS shrimp in there.  Since they could have only come from the CBS, I realized that the CBS must have had mixed lines (which was totally fine with me) back in their bloodline.  Anyway, I kept pulling out the CRS, and eventually had enough for them to just have their own tank.  The pic is from that tank.  The surprising thing to me is that most of them were still SSS level, even though they were coming from CBS parents.

 

Regarding the moss, I just found this link, so I am pretty sure that my moss on the left is the Giant version of Willow moss.  It was sold to me as Rose moss, but I think looking at my pic I took, and this link, I feel pretty confident that it is the Giant Willow.