# How to use Riccia?



## RentaPig311 (Jul 6, 2009)

Hey Y'all,
Got some riccia off ebay for a decent price. When it came though it just looked like grass clippings in a net. There were no roots or real form to it. I just laid it on top of the substrate in little pinches all over the tank. Will it take hold and grow like this or did I order the wrong thing?


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## frogface (Feb 20, 2010)

I think I have read to start it in water and it will grow out from there, but, I'm not sure.


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## slipperheads (Oct 17, 2007)

Riccia is sort of like that baseball bubble gum; really stringy, you really dont know which end is the root end. Putting it in water will get it to grow a bit, and then what I do is transfer it to my viv, with the same side up as it was while in the water.


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## poison beauties (Mar 1, 2010)

When you transfer it to the viv keep it misted always wet for a couple weeks. Mine grew in in a twenty gollon in about a month and a half. The more light the better. If you place any of it upside down accidentally dont worry as it will turn and grow up right.


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## ghettopieninja (Jul 29, 2008)

Riccia, like all liverworts, are non-vascular so they do no produce a root system. In nature they float at the surface of the water in loose clumps. In the vivarium you can either allow it to establish into a large clump and place that piece in the tank as Slipperhead suggested or you can just scatter small portions of it around tank as you have done. Both ways will work.


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## RentaPig311 (Jul 6, 2009)

Great...thanks for the input guys. I'll just keep it wet for a few weeks and hope it grows in. I don't know much about it I just fell in love with the manicured lawn look it provided to the tanks I saw.


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## shishkabab (Jan 1, 2010)

I had some pretty good luck with riccia. Keep it as wet as possible the first few weeks and you'll get good growth. Anyways, here's my link from my tank with a riccia carpet. Good luck. 

http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/me...0-2nd-viv-20g-riccia-growth-before-after.html

by the way, don't be discouraged when you first lay the riccia down. Riccia looks very different on land vs submerged in water. You will begin to notice that the riccia starts to thicken up after a couple of weeks on land. IMO it looks and grows much better on land than in water.


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## RentaPig311 (Jul 6, 2009)

Great looking tank. I have cocofiber and peet moss siliconed to my background but I might give putting some of that Java Moss on it a whirl. Looks really nice.


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## b1fcs (Apr 16, 2009)

Be careful with Ebay riccia. I got some that seemed like a good deal a few months ago (probably same guy), but as I was acclimating it in a sterilite, I found some super tiny snails and duckweed. Both are HUGE nuisances in a tank, altho in a PDF vivarium it probably isnt quite as big of a deal, but they are both extremely hard to get rid of if you ever choose to. 

Riccia is very common in the aquarium world, but with their high lighting it gets out of control fast and clogs filters like mad. Hence, you can go to any aquarium forum and get TONS of it cheap. One post on aquaticplantcentral.com will return a mailbox full of offers.

I would also try to get the dwarf riccia, it looks a little better on land, but it is a little harder to come by.


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## RentaPig311 (Jul 6, 2009)

Dang. Wish I had read this. I just put it straight into the tank. Well I guess there's nothing I can do now but wait and see if the snails come.


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## carbonetc (Oct 13, 2008)

Aquatic snails can't cause any trouble on land. They'll just pull into their shells and wait to die.

It's hard training vivarium people that snails are viewed very differently in aquatic hobbies. When I was selling weeping moss every once in a while a baby snail (aquatic) would get past me and people would think their viv was going to get infested and all their plants would get eaten. Instead the snail died as expected and the world kept turning.

And a single baby snail can be a good thing. I put a baby ramshorn in a viv water feature a few years ago and it's grown massive keeping it clean. There's no trouble it could possibly cause; it's just another helpful bit of janitorial fauna.


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## b1fcs (Apr 16, 2009)

True,they wont do well on land, but a single pond or MTS can become hundreds in a few months depending on the water feature . That being said, the water section of my viv is seeded with MTS, they aerate my sand substrate and clean my plant leaves, but I already knew what I was getting into when I seeded it.


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