# Sphagnum Moss on Background



## Dego510 (Jun 13, 2018)

Hi All,

I'm currently making my background for my first dart frog vivarium. I have some experience with backgrounds because I made one for my crested gecko a while back using GS, silicone, and coco cradle.

For this build, I'd like to try something different. The background will be mostly cork flats with Great Stuff inbetween. Once I carve out the GS and put in silicone, how do I attach the sphagnum moss? Do just jam it right in? Or, since the strands of moss are somewhat long, should I just try to push half of the moss into the silicone and have the remaining half just hang off, if this makes sense? The hope is that it revives. Not sure if it'll revive if most is stuck in silicone.

I may be over-thinking this.


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

Greetings,

Unless you are getting fresh sphagnum yourself, commerciallly available sphagnum has usually been dried such that it will not revive. Dead, dried sphagnum can still hold-on to some green color but it will not actually come back to life when re-wetted. Luckily, the sphagnum doesn't need to come back to life since it still provides moisture even when long dead. In fact, sphagnum is a bit large to be a good viv moss - so it not reviving is just as well.

Rewetted sphagnum, though rarely revived, can grow new sphagnum from spores so you can still get living sphagnum eventually. It crops-up in my tanks here and there and I remove it once it becomes too big and begins to fall-over on my other plants.


----------



## SirGunther (Jun 4, 2014)

In my experience, you don't need GS at all, and you definitely don't need to hold it in with silicone. If you put the cork flats close enough together (1" or less), you can just wet the sphagnum, squeeze out the water, and then wedge the sphagnum in the cracks. Just keep stuffing it in there, and don't be stingy. It holds quite well, without any need for silicone or other adhesive. When you are done, shine a bright flashlight through the background, and wedge more sphagnum in any place you see light shining through. 

I have a traditional GS viv (my first), and one done with this method, and I vastly prefer this method. Much cleaner and easier, and looks better in my opinion. Plants definitely root into the sphagnum better than into the GS, too. The sphagnum greens up a bit with algae where it stays wet, and occasionally you get a little regrowth, so the aesthetic value increases over time, and you never have the problem of the background having bald spots where the silicone came off the GS, or didn't pick up enough coco coir.


----------



## gonzalez (Mar 28, 2018)

I used the sphagnum cork method on my first tank and there's no need for GS. Just silicone some cork to the back and stuffed sphagnum between it. Looks great and holds plants very well.









Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk


----------



## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

kimcmich said:


> Greetings,
> 
> Unless you are getting fresh sphagnum yourself, commerciallly available sphagnum has usually been dried such that it will not revive. Dead, dried sphagnum can still hold-on to some green color but it will not actually come back to life when re-wetted. Luckily, the sphagnum doesn't need to come back to life since it still provides moisture even when long dead. In fact, sphagnum is a bit large to be a good viv moss - so it not reviving is just as well.
> 
> Rewetted sphagnum, though rarely revived, can grow new sphagnum from spores so you can still get living sphagnum eventually. It crops-up in my tanks here and there and I remove it once it becomes too big and begins to fall-over on my other plants.


Actually, the Better-Gro brand, available at Lowe's, generates new sphagnum growth quite readily. I've seen it happen on many vivs.


----------



## jgragg (Nov 23, 2009)

I fully concur on the GS - just skip it unless you want a lot of 3-D depth to your background (I often have some "fake rock" with deeper ledges and such on the lower half of my backgrounds, and do a flatter cork mosaic on the upper half). 

For the mosaic, I lay a bed of silicone down the left and right margins of my cork fragments, and adhere them in a nice pattern (and with cracks an inch or smaller). Let it all cure a couple of days. Then I stuff moss anywhere I can get it behind the cork pieces - some foot-long tweezers really help with this. Then finally I stuff the cracks, as described below. The left/right bead pattern is so moisture can flow, top-to-bottom, through all my moss and keep things fairly evenly moist. Water doesn't have to flow _around_ the cork, you see, it (but not animals!) can go _behind_ the cork too. I do a lot of mossy drip walls with my cork mosaics. The cork stays dry so you can mount dry-foot stuff there if you like. Broms, orchids that like to dry out between waterings, etc. The wet-foot stuff will just glom onto the moss, and away it goes. 

I'm only doing stuff I learned here, and also got from experience - not taking credit for anything, just trying to explain the process.



> Just keep stuffing it in there, and don't be stingy.


Exactly. My technique is to grab a pretty big fistful of the damp LFS out of my re-hydrating bucket, squeeze pretty hard, and sort of wrap the floppy bits around my (gloved) fingers and the central ball within them. Pull my fingers out & keep wrapping & squeezing. Once I have a nice, tidy, pretty dense ball or "unit" I stuff that in the crack. For filling cracks I like to work end to end, trying to size my "units" big enough so I don't have to stuff more moss nearer the surface (where it could possibly fall, or get pulled, out). I'm stacking & packing "units" left to right or right to left, one unit deep, until I get to the other end of the crack. Hopefully that makes sense. You're gonna go through some moss. Just for example, I consistently use a 100g pack of moss for every 1-gal bag of cork pieces I stick on a background.

If your hands aren't tired after a moss stuffing, you didn't do it right! Ha ha. Really though. You gotta _jam that stuff_. Otherwise the plants will grow big, get heavy, and then gravity can pull it all out and down.

Good luck and have fun!


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

@Pumilo,

Does the moss seem to re-green and start growth from the mature axes - or are you saying sporeling sphagnum sprouts up quickly? Either is possible depending on the actual process for drying the sphagnum but spore-sprouting seems to be the more common source from commercial sphagnum that has usually been baked/dried/bleached in the sun.

I don't usually stress about this sort of thing but if the sphagnum is truly reviving, then it was not dried/baked well enough to decontaminate it, either.


----------



## Dego510 (Jun 13, 2018)

Wow! Thanks for all the responses and advice. Very helpful.
Unfortunately, when I started this thread, I had already attached the cork flats using Great Stuff. However, thanks to everyone's advice yesterday, I did remove the GS anywhere where the gaps would be about an inch or less. Wherever the gaps were too big, I did use the standard "coco fiber to silicone" method. I did this last night, so the silicone should be dry by tonight, right? If so, I can start shoving sphagnum moss into the tight gaps tonight. I think it's going to turn out great. Once I'm done, I'll post a pic.


----------



## Dego510 (Jun 13, 2018)

Here's what I came up with. What do you think? Be honest. Any negatives? Any improvements I should make? (Obviously, I still need to add plants)


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

@D510,

Living sphagnum moss is a clustering plant of boggy areas rather than growing like a vine or a pendant as you have here. The hanging strands will not come back to life. The excess of loose/draped spahgnum will also retain alot of moisture - too much perhaps. And when you want to start planting, the loose sphagnum will get in the way (and you don't want sphagnum sitting on the leaves of other plants - it will encourage fungus/rot).

I would suggest cleaning up all the long tails of sphagnum. When you do get plants, you can use toothpicks or bamboo skewers pushed into the stuffed sphagnum to anchor your plants in the background, FYI.


----------



## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

kimcmich said:


> @Pumilo,
> 
> Does the moss seem to re-green and start growth from the mature axes - or are you saying sporeling sphagnum sprouts up quickly? Either is possible depending on the actual process for drying the sphagnum but spore-sprouting seems to be the more common source from commercial sphagnum that has usually been baked/dried/bleached in the sun.
> 
> I don't usually stress about this sort of thing but if the sphagnum is truly reviving, then it was not dried/baked well enough to decontaminate it, either.


No, I'm not talking about when it turns a dark green from what is probably algae growth. What I see quite often is what appears to be spore sprouting. It appears to be new growth generating from a dead bed of sphagnum. The new growth is a pale green, and is quite obviously sphagnum moss. None of the plants I used had live sphagnum on them, so there is no other source for the spores to have come from.
My friend and fellow administrator on Terrarium Vivarium Paludarium Plant Classified Group reports the same thing. In fact, she calls it a plague and swears she'll never use sphagnum in a build, ever again. I've also seen a conversation on one of the facebook orchid boards in the past year, discussing the problem of higher quality sphagnum generating new growth, and various ways to sterilize it before use to prevent that. 

The three things everybody that reports it seems to have in common are:
1) High quality sphag. Better Gro does it often, as do some bulk sources of long fiber sphag.
2) The sphagnum only comes back it it is constantly moist. If it dries out daily between waterings, it won't grow.
3) It seems to come back best under high light conditions.

I'm working with almost all miniatures now, many of which would be easily overrun by live sphagnum. I do a microwave boil on all my sphagnum now. Yes, a wall of sphagnum can be pretty, but it overruns anything small and simply buries it alive. This is why Krissy calls it a plague.


----------



## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

This is why I always use crappy sphagnum from big box stores for this purpose. I have done about 10 of these builds, some 4 or more years ago and none of them have live sphagnum growing out of the back wall. I do occasionally get it sprouting in super wet spots on the bottom of the tank directly under the light, but it grows so slow it is hardly a menace. You guys that are having issues with being overgrown with live sphagnum need to lower your standards for sphagnum quality ;-) That long-fibered New Zealand stuff is for the fat cats! You need some of the stuff that routinely has grass, sticks, branches, dead mice, etc. mixed in there! That stuff won't grow on ya...

Mark



Pumilo said:


> No, I'm not talking about when it turns a dark green from what is probably algae growth. What I see quite often is what appears to be spore sprouting. It appears to be new growth generating from a dead bed of sphagnum. The new growth is a pale green, and is quite obviously sphagnum moss. None of the plants I used had live sphagnum on them, so there is no other source for the spores to have come from.
> My friend and fellow administrator on Terrarium Vivarium Paludarium Plant Classified Group reports the same thing. In fact, she calls it a plague and swears she'll never use sphagnum in a build, ever again. I've also seen a conversation on one of the facebook orchid boards in the past year, discussing the problem of higher quality sphagnum generating new growth, and various ways to sterilize it before use to prevent that.
> 
> The three things everybody that reports it seems to have in common are:
> ...


----------



## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

Encyclia said:


> This is why I always use crappy sphagnum from big box stores for this purpose. I have done about 10 of these builds, some 4 or more years ago and none of them have live sphagnum growing out of the back wall. I do occasionally get it sprouting in super wet spots on the bottom of the tank directly under the light, but it grows so slow it is hardly a menace. You guys that are having issues with being overgrown with live sphagnum need to lower your standards for sphagnum quality ;-) That long-fibered New Zealand stuff is for the fat cats! You need some of the stuff that routinely has grass, sticks, branches, dead mice, etc. mixed in there! That stuff won't grow on ya...
> 
> Mark


Don't go too cheap, Mark. I wish I could remember the brand that Lowe's used to carry as a second option. It was utter crap. It was cheaper, darker, and full of sticks, etc. Unfortunately, within a week the smell of rot was overwhelming, and I had lost two froglets. I had to scrap it and start over. I would appear it is possible to go too cheap.


----------



## Heartagramtc (Jul 24, 2011)

Well I think my sphagnum came back to life. I used a dried block style found in most hobby/hardware stores. I've had to cut it back multiple times.


----------



## Heartagramtc (Jul 24, 2011)

Pumilo said:


> kimcmich said:
> 
> 
> > @Pumilo,
> ...


I'd have to agree with the fact that it takes over. It looked great at first but once it started growing out of control I wish I never used it. Now unless I want to strip it down I'm fighting the sphagnum, the random fern from said sphagnum, and the creeping fig. You can't even see the background since everything is overgrown.


----------



## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

Pumilo said:


> Don't go too cheap, Mark. I wish I could remember the brand that Lowe's used to carry as a second option. It was utter crap. It was cheaper, darker, and full of sticks, etc. Unfortunately, within a week the smell of rot was overwhelming, and I had lost two froglets. I had to scrap it and start over. I would appear it is possible to go too cheap.


That's unfortunate, Doug. That's probably the stuff I use. I have never had any trouble like that. Maybe a bad batch? For me, it keeps it's structure for years and I have never had it rot. The sticks are just part of the user experience  I will keep an eye out for the rotting behavior, though, and report back if I see anything like that. 

Mark


----------

