Moss Terrarium

A forum to ask questions, post setups, and generally discuss anything having to do with photomacrography and photomicroscopy.

Moderators: MacroMike, nzmacro, Ken Ramos, twebster, S. Alden

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Frez
Posts: 419
Joined: Sat May 08, 2004 12:33 pm
Location: New Hampshire USA
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Moss Terrarium

Post by Frez »

Hi Everyone

After finding the Amoeba and some other stuff in moss from the yard, I gutted my small aquarium and transformed it into a terrarium for mosses in hopes of maintaining a critter collection for the winter. At the bottom I left the under gravel filter in place. On top of that are 3 inches of pea sized gravel. The aeration tube from the under gravel filter sticks up through the gravel and will make replenishing the water supply easy. A long air stone is under the gravel along one side and forces bubbles up through it. There seems to be about 4 or 5 kinds of moss. There is also some dead wood that has lichens on it and some soil. The moss was covered with freshly fallen snow and had to be chopped out of the ground with an old hatchet. It’ll get a few days to settle in and we’ll see if there are some of those crazy amoebas in it. The terrarium was fun to put together and hopefully it will work out. Here are some skycam pics. The first is a megapixel image and the second is very dialup friendly.

http://conk.com/nextportal/sites/frez/terra.jpg
http://conk.com/nextportal/sites/frez/terra1.jpg

Update: After just a few hours there are some small insects walking around on the clumps of mosses. These things were in frozen ground under snow. Hopefully by tomorrow the mosses haven’t grown exponentially and engulfed the nearby Apophot. :shock:

One more update: The terrarium is about 28 hours old now. Very little condensation forms on the inside. The little that does evaporates when the top is removed for a short time. Nothing seems to be having a bad go at it and all is nice and green. The Apophot is fine. :) Maybe I'll do a critter check tonight.


Thanks
Frez

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Ken Ramos
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Post by Ken Ramos »

:D Hi ya Frez. I too have been playing around with these things but mine are on a much smaller scale. Although I have not been looking for amebae, which I should now that you have brought it up, I have been looking for critters through the stereomicroscope. A word of caution here though, I have had problems in the past with fungus developing after a few days because of the glass cover. Be sure to keep it where it gets ample light and like you have been doing remove the cover for a little while from time to time. I have been using small petri dishes of about 60mm. 8)
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Kenneth Ramos
Rutherfordton, North Carolina
Kens Microscopy
Reposts of my images within the galleries are welcome, as are constructive critical critiques.

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Frez
Posts: 419
Joined: Sat May 08, 2004 12:33 pm
Location: New Hampshire USA
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Post by Frez »

That could be a problem. Hopefully the constant supply of fresh air will limit fungus growth. A monthly dose of plant food might help too.

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