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 Want some green to look at in your home but you cant even keep weeds alive? Want to look at bugs with zero risk of touching those icky things? Want to get into gardening but you don't believe in manual labor? Moss Terrariums are for you! Moss terrariums or mossariums, are a type of vivarium, a self-contained ecosystem where moss is central to the design. Mosses are popular components of terrariums because of their lush, green character, ease of maintenance, and resilience. Because mosses do not have traditional root systems, they absorb their water through their leaf surface - making them ideal for enclosed terrariums where the air can be kept at a high humidity and constant temperature. Mossariums require very little maintenance - generally only a re-misting/watering every 6 - 12 months and trimming any plants, and cleaning the glass. If placed in a good location with lots of indirect light or some artificial light, they will thrive in these mini ecosystems for years. To compliment the mosses themselves or add some color, many species of "regular" plants also do great in these conditions: ferns, fittonias, ivy, pepperomia, etc. In addition to plants, mossariums also contain bugs! Springtails are very common as part of the cleanup crew and longterm health of a mossarium. Homemade Examples I started making mossariums 2 years ago after making one as an impromptu christmas gift, and I thought "wow I'm really enjoying the heck out of making this and looking at the result of it, this is great". I have since made about 2 dozen of them in various sizes and designs, for myself, as comission, or to give away as a gift. I'm definitely no expert but 99% of them are still alive, including the very first one, so I'd say that's good enough. Below are some examples in different formats:             Getting started Technique-wise there is not much to know other than the basic layering process which is common across all mossarium types. There are some online guides that will cover this much more indepth than I can type out here, like this excellent basic step-by-step construction guide. For the container, you can go with any glass or acrylic container you like as long as you can seal it (doesnt have to be 100% airtight). Be careful with some glass, especially cylindrical ones like vases, because cheap ones will have "banding" flaws and it makes it hard to actually properly see into it from the sides. Use a ruler or something to check for any warping. I would highly recommend against using the classic distillation bottle or other bottle shape, or anything with a very narrow opening. They are perfectly doable but unless you have specialized tools and a lot of patience, I guarantee those bottles will frustrate the hell out of you for a first time attempt. I get all my glass containers from a nearby thriftshop where even the huge vases and bowls are sold for under $5. If you want to start with a new container but keep the price low - think vases, food storage containers, store display boxes, etc. For substrate, any petshop that deals in reptile and/or fish supplies or gardening center can get you set up on the cheap. For the false bottom layer you can use basically any 3-5mm gravel - aquarium gravel, paving gravel, even hydropellets or clay pellets. Coco fiber and sphagnum are both sold in dried bricks, expand greatly in size when wet, and you only need to break off a few chunks for each mossarium. If you are going to include other live plants, you'll need potting soil and some aeration material. A mix of orchid subtrate and potting soil, or some perlite, to make sure the soil stays aerated. For hardscape, that is, things like rocks, sticks, ornaments, and other design elements, the choice is up to you. Those same pet shops often have spiderwood, rocks, and other hardscape materials already available and those work great. However, nothing stops you from just collecting pretty rocks and sticks from outdoors and going for a fully native scape. You can go all natural, or you can make what are esentially dioramas with live plants - up to you. As for plants, there are a couple of species that are almost impossible to kill once they're set up in this kind of environment. Pepperomia, Ferns, Creeping Fig, Fittonia, Syngonium, Polka dot plants, and prayer plants are all available pretty much everywhere and will thrive in a mossarium. Do not use succulents or cacti. You'll want some bugs. Springtails should be a part of any setup - they love nothing more than eating decaying plant matter and fungus in a humid environment, and are the cleanup crew that keeps your mossarium thriving. They'll jump around similar to fleas when agitated, hence their name. You can get them at any reptile pet shop where they are sold as live feed for frogs.Just look at these cute lil' guys As for where to get moss, you have some options. You can buy moss species online, but usually this is either in extremely small quantities for aquariums and thus expensive, or large bulk crates of 5+lb. That does not sound like much, but I trust me when I say that is entirely too much moss. You can also harvest it yourself - unless you live in a literal desert you more than likely have several native moss species nearby, probably on your roof, gutters, or in between driveway tiles. If you're in a temperate environment and near even a tiny piece of nature with trees you're likely to run into mood moss, star moss, fern moss, and in particular sheetmoss/hypnum moss. All of them grow in pretty large mats and clusters that are easy to spot. Bring plastic containers and a small digging/cutting tool (I use a tiny paint trowel) and remove small patches of mats. Don't go tearing entire moss mats off of trees and ripping up entire balls of mood moss from a nature preserve - moss patches on the edges of walkways, from bricks, or from bare construction ground work just as well once you know what to look for. Limit yourself, few handfuls from different locations is enough for a medium sized mossarium.  Depending on how into it you are, there's a lot of accessories and tools you can end up buying but in my experience you only really need two to make your life easier during construction - a set of long tweezers or equivalent (chopsticks work just as well), and some kind of soft tamper for putting pressure on soil/moss without crushing it. I personally use a silicone bottlecleaner for that, but you can also just use pieces of rubber on a stick. A brush of some kind is also handy for removing dirt/cocofiber from leaves and moss.  Basic shopping list
Construction and design This guide covers the basics of construction better than I can type out, and you'll see its not the actual construction thats the hard part. Once you get down to it you can create a mossarium in about half an hour if you want. Often it's the design process that takes the longest, and sometimes it's just a happy coincidence of finding the right container or centerpiece that inspires you, or some rock shape that gives you an idea. That being said a lot of the same design guides you can find online for aquarium and bonsai such as Iwagumi work for mossariums too, as well as other common principles like the rule of 3. Keep the intended viewing angle of your mossarium in mind - is it going to be on a shelf mostly visible from only one side, or do you want something viewable from all sides? For large pieces of hardscape like rocks or wood that need fixing, pure silicone works fine for attaching basically anything to glass, but do not use it directly on plants or moss. For plants or moss, cyanoacrylate-based superglue is the best choice. It cures fast, even underwater, is safe for animals and plants, and you can use it to directly glue moss or plants onto hardscape. Protip when fixing hardscape using superglue: saturate a cotton ball with some glue and use this as a medium between the two items you want to glue together, giving much more contact than just directly glueing things together. Maintenance Light: Never put a mossarium in direct sunlight. Not only do most mosses not tolerate long stretches of direct sun, it'll turn your enclosed glass jar into a pressure cooker. At best it'll kill everything inside, at worst it'll crack and spill everything everywhere. Put it in a bright location and/or supplemented with some artificial lights. 3 of my mossariums are in an open plan office away from any windows and they're doing just fine. You don't need grow or heating lights, I use a set of 3W LED lamps for shelf lighting for above the jars in a darker part of a room that does get some indirect light and they also do just fine. Water: Look for condensation on the glass: if there is condensation in the morning but none during the day - the humidity inside is perfect. Is it always condensated, leave the jar open for a day, close it again and recheck. If it's never condensated, you'll want to mist inside the jar. If possible, use rain water or softened water instead of hard tap water when misting. Temperature: Place your mossarium outside of any drafty areas (prevents condensation on the drafty area of the glass) and preferably nowhere where it gets colder than 15c. In sealed mossariums, some kind of fungus or mildew growth explosion at the start is all but guaranteed. You can boil all your hardscapes, wash all your moss, sterilize all your fiber and sphagnum, microwave your containers, and you will still get fungal threads from the aerial spores that made it in there during construction. In my experience you'll see a big fungal growth in the first 1 - 4 weeks while the springtail pop is still balancing and the plants are still getting used to their new environment. After 2-3 months or so the mossarium is usually stable, and if you want to for aesthetic reasons, you can remove any leftover mold/lichen by dabbing some diluted peroxide or vinegar on it with a cotton swab. Fishstick fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Feb 25, 2024 |
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Feb 24, 2024 00:32
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Reserved because I accidentally posted before I was done
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Feb 24, 2024 00:34
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Ground floor of a cool thread 
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Feb 24, 2024 01:41
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The Buddha mossarium is extremely rad
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Feb 24, 2024 04:35
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I like looking at closed ecosystems in bottles
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Feb 24, 2024 08:30
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Glad to see this get a continuation after that derail in the schadenfreude thread.
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Feb 24, 2024 08:49
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Currently working on a mossarium starting from what I think used to be an outdoor candle wind protection... thing. 60cents from the thriftstore. Some cleaning and sanding later, it looks pretty good  I have a lot of christmas led lights left over, and the majority are water-resistant, so I wanted to do something with that in this one as well, in keeping with the former function of the glass. To that end, turning an old jam-jar into a lantern for the centerpiece  Height-testing, the top of the styrofoam will be the lowest point, probably.  To be continued once I can tear myself away from Helldivers Fishstick fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Feb 24, 2024 |
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Feb 24, 2024 10:21
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Also from the schad thread, the moss terrarium kit and instructions I made for SASS 2014. I have a bunch of terrariums that I will post later once I take some good pics.
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Feb 24, 2024 19:21
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Thanks for making this thread. Looks super cool. My dad is into making sculptures with small driftwood and I guess his materials could be a good basis for one of these. What happens when you don’t use the little jumping critters? Do you get a lot of dead plant material?
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Feb 25, 2024 00:59
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mrfart posted:
That could look really nice! Wooden figurines pair real well, there's also a wood type called "mopani wood" you can find in aquarium stores that often has very soft organic curves, knots, and openings that you can easily carve into something unique:  If it's natural driftwood I would definitely boil or (briefly) microwave it before using to get rid of anything nasty that might have hitched if your dad doesn't already do something like that as part of the process. mrfart posted:
In an open terrarium you're just going to have to clear dead leaves and such yourself like with a houseplant, not an issue if it's a moss-only terrarium though. If you don't you'll get mould and fungus; which shouldn't harm the moss or plant but won't look or smell very nice. Healthy terrariums basically smell like wet forest floor, it's kind of wonderful. In enclosed ones you're going to have mould issues pretty much constantly without any kind of detritivores, especially if there's any dead plant material left in it.There's honestly no reason not to add springtails to any of the terraria you make - they're tiny (about the size of fleas) and mostly chill just under the soil unless there's an abundant food source like a dead leaf or root. Their poop and remains also act as fertilizer for your plants, and once most of the mould is gone the population self-regulates. I keep a small breeder colony in a tupperware box with wet spagnum on the bottom, flyscreen, and clay hydropellets on top. The springtails love the surface area of the water-retaining pellets, and this way if I need to add any springtails to a new terrarium I can just pick up a pellet and shake em into their new home. 
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Feb 25, 2024 02:56
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Because of this thread, every glass vessel I see is immediately judged by its terrariumability. Also found some mosses on a walk this morning near a local creek. No terrarium yet, but I've got a big Mason jar. Just keep the top open for now and mist daily until I've got a proper setup for them? 
Slugworth fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Feb 25, 2024 |
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Feb 25, 2024 12:34
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Did you know Winter is not the best time to try to get moss? Frozen ground, who would have thought? Also apparently hot glue doesn't stick to glass well, so I need to figure out a top. Thank you for posting this, I liked the derail in the shad thread!Tried it and I kind of just free balled it. I got gravel and sphagnum and just kinda ran with that. I'm mostly curious what the chances of detritivores appearing from backyard harvested moss is. NH if that helps, although I figured it was a good general question.  Kind of crap but I'll get there. I have a few ideas at the very least! _____! fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Feb 28, 2024 |
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Feb 28, 2024 01:51
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I have pill bugs and little centipedes from harvested moss in my 10 gallon terrarium.
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Feb 28, 2024 02:39
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Slugworth posted:Because of this thread, every glass vessel I see is immediately judged by its terrariumability. Those are some nice varieties! They look a little on the dry side though. Good chance that creek has giant mats of hypnum/sheet moss too during low water too. I keep my "waiting" moss in a transparant tupperware with some wet sphagnum and half open in indirect light, jar should work just as well. Keep it humid and out of direct sunlight _____! posted:Did you know Winter is not the best time to try to get moss? Frozen ground, who would have thought? Good start! You're almost guaranteed to have some pillbugs and other soil critters in there, I almost always get some kind of stowaway even if it's just an earwig or a couple of ants. Leave a piece of natural wood in your yard on the ground for a week or two and you'll have no trouble finding em  . Just keep in mind some pillbug species will happily eat up all your moss (springtails will not).If you'd like some constructive tips, you've probably got more soil/cocol than you need for that moss if you're removing it with big sod clumps, and it might be a good idea to put in a layer of sphagnum between the false bottom and moss like that - helps keep humidity stable. Maybe remove some of the bigger unnecessary sod before putting them in a jar, leaves more room for more moss and some rocks/etc as an attention piece. You don't have to get super fancy but even a couple twigs or a single pretty rock does a lot for a simple jar! Here's one with only 2 moss species and a single Ryuoh stone I made for my desk at the office:  Edit: And some that are of a friend's making: Paving stone and some old busted up paving bricks + backyard moss  Forest moss/plants in a thriftstore deco element  These two are a little more "technical" because there's a wick running from the false bottom into the sphagnum the moss is on. Fishstick fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Feb 28, 2024 |
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Feb 28, 2024 08:06
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Oh yeah definitely ignore the 2 on the sides - I was trying to err on the side of caution so as to not hurt the roots. Very much just experimenting and figuring it out on those first ones. If it stops raining today I may dump those and start over. I couldn't find coco fiber and got rid of most of the dirt on the main one in the picture (definitely not all of it) so most of the dirt you see in it is sphagnum. Very relieved to hear I can go with less since the whole point is to see inside of it! How thin of a layer of sphagnum/gravel can you get away with? How much soil should I leave attached for that thicker moss? All the ones in this thread look like very thin layers but I wasn't sure how much of that was it compacting over time. As for leaving wood out to attract detritivores I live in the woods so there's plenty of that just laying around! _____! fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Feb 28, 2024 |
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Feb 28, 2024 14:17
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_____! posted:Oh yeah definitely ignore the 2 on the sides - I was trying to err on the side of caution so as to not hurt the roots. Very much just experimenting and figuring it out on those first ones. If it stops raining today I may dump those and start over. For gravel I usually go just an inch or under depending on how big the jar is. Thin layer of sphagnum or sphagnum/coco fiber mix on top (about half the thickness of the gravel?) as a base - I also like to use this layer to play around with what I want the final "layout" to be in terms of depths/heights and where the hardscape(s) will go. For the moss, one thing you can do is wash it - just rinse it with some distilled water until most of the soil is gone. Moss doesnt have any roots so really you don't need any of it. The hardcore bonsai people that play with moss don't use any of the original substrate, you just need a surface the moss can eventually attach to. I personally like to leave a little layer of soil/substrate attached so the moss doesnt have to waste time/energy regrowing all those rhyzomes first.
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Feb 28, 2024 14:51
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Your moss terrariums are all super cool  I hope you get bugs
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Feb 28, 2024 19:31
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No bugs yet, just some mold on a plant I added and the rock next to it (well I swapped the rock in the picture with one I pilfered from a nearby creek). It's winter here so some of the leaves were dead so no shock there. Some of the moss has, for lack of a better term, closed up (like an unopened bud). I left the top of the jar ajar to dry it a bit so we'll see how it goes! Hopefully round 2 this weekend goes better from the suggestions y'all gave me. I'll also be scavenging some dead wood in the hopes I can find some sleepy springtails. My plan is to sort of get something going like the intersection between a zen garden and mossarium.
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Mar 1, 2024 19:21
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Nice wet spring day, ideal for some harvestin. Got a nice haul of threadmoss, starmoss, hypnum and even some moodmoss _____! posted:
Isopods are easy to find, just toss over any piece of wood in the forest soil. Springtails are gonna be difficult, not only because they're like 0.2 - 1mm big but because they jump around like fleas. You can get a box of them as feeder insects from pet shops for under $5 and then breed those indefinitely with a piece of mouldy bread and some bbq charcoal. If the mold starts to get out of control you can dab it with diluted vinegar or peroxide. If it's not a full on mould explosion yet you can also try misting with diluted chamomille tea which acts as a mild fungicide. Fishstick fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Mar 2, 2024 |
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Mar 2, 2024 18:25
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I made a terrarium. Few different unknown species of moss from an NC creek, a string plant of some sort, and a piece of driftwood I had laying around from an old aquarium. I see similar string plants in terrariums, so I'm hopeful it does well. The container is a pickle jar because I was impatient and had it on hand - The clarity is pretty awful, so I'll probably swap containers at some point, but this is all sort of a test bed for now anyways. I'm gonna grab some spring tails before sealing it up, for now just open topped to keep it from getting moldy. 
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Mar 3, 2024 21:12
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Slugworth posted:I made a terrarium. Few different unknown species of moss from an NC creek, a string plant of some sort, and a piece of driftwood I had laying around from an old aquarium. I see similar string plants in terrariums, so I'm hopeful it does well. It seems to have a narrow opening at the top so you can probably keep it open topped easily for a while, takes a while for a jar to dry out if theres no air movement. The string plants look like string of hearts, which are probably not going to survive long in a closed jar, but I've never tried them personally before. If you want to stick with a climber (I think you should, would look neat if you can guide it around/on your driftwood), Creeping figs look a bit similar and do ridiculously well in jars and are very easy to make clones of from trimmings. String of Turtles, which are completely unrelated to String of Hearts and are actually a pepperomia, look similar too and also do real well in closed jars.
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Mar 3, 2024 21:42
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Looking good! Hope your pet store has springtails, the one I went to did not.
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Mar 3, 2024 22:19
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Fishstick posted:It seems to have a narrow opening at the top so you can probably keep it open topped easily for a while, takes a while for a jar to dry out if theres no air movement. Found some very tiny fern-like plants along the river today, plucked a couple and throwing them in the jar. Who needs research when you can just grab random stuff and toss it in?
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Mar 4, 2024 00:00
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Slugworth posted:
Thats the fun part about harvesting from nature - if its already growing in a mossy area you know they probably like similar conditions so it'll likely work out!
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Mar 4, 2024 09:30
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 So I think I found a nice jar. But it doesn’t have a lid. What do you think is best to replace it? Just some clingfilm or a small plate or something?
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Mar 6, 2024 12:05
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Clingfilm works as a temp lid. You often see corks used but I'm not a fan of corks in these jars because of mildew issues and the fact that they block light. I get glass lids looking for things like glass serving trays, glass plates, cheese/pie covers, ashtray bases, glass coasters, etc. Sometimes you just have to get lucky of having Things Fitting Into Things. Also: Belgian or Dutch? Can't tell if that's a GVA paper
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Mar 6, 2024 12:18
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Fishstick posted:Clingfilm works as a temp lid. You often see corks used but I'm not a fan of corks in these jars because of mildew issues and the fact that they block light. Haha, well spotted. Belgian, yes. They used the paper at the thrift store.
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Mar 6, 2024 16:00
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mrfart posted:Haha, well spotted. Belgian, yes. They used the paper at the thrift store. Belgian hi-5. Here's my assorted "possible future lids?" cabinet/box, most of that is also easily findable in thrift stores. Glass coasters are super common and work great for small jars, also things like ethanol candle containers.  
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Mar 6, 2024 19:39
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Fishstick posted:Currently working on a mossarium starting from what I think used to be an outdoor candle wind protection... thing. 60cents from the thriftstore. After experimenting with the lantern I ended up not going with it in this piece - it heats up way too much despite being 2x3W, and in the end didnt really match the style of the base. Instead, I used an existing wood ornament and gave it a coat of waterproofing and mounted my outdoor lights on the inside. It was extremely sticky and messy work, and the inside ended up being a lot more wiring than I had anticipated so I had to adjust some plans.  Here it is set up with bugs and all, ready to settle. I might go back and add some finishing touches once the plants have settled a bit, I'm not sure about one of the trimmings I planted but I'll have to see how it goes. The foreground needs some low cover and after all this string plant talk I think a string of turtles would be neat as a final addition if I can find one.  
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Mar 8, 2024 18:19
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I've been interested in learning more about mosses for a few months now and plan to look more closely at them this summer when I go out hiking. Do you have any good resources about ID'ing mosses? I could see myself really getting into this hobby
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Mar 9, 2024 04:10
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Genderfluent posted:I've been interested in learning more about mosses for a few months now and plan to look more closely at them this summer when I go out hiking. Do you have any good resources about ID'ing mosses? I could see myself really getting into this hobby Serpadesign has a good video specifically about finding and identifying native mosses of different types, so it might not apply completely to your biome, but they are some of the more common ones for terrariums: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJAmG1pHqho Visited my florist for some baby plants and he gave me a couple of free A. Coleus plants that he couldn't seem to keep thriving, and from what I've read they should do well in a terrarium biome, so that's what I'm doin today.  Edit a few hours later:  Ate up all my moss supplies and I'm not sure if either plant is going to make it since they're problem cases to start with, so their "slots" have coco-fiber plant pots. That way I can remove their pot easily if they do end up dyin'. Fishstick fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 13:39
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Some free top tier advice: When collecting moss, check if it doesn’t contain a colony of fire ants. Ouch
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Mar 14, 2024 15:22
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There's fire ants in Belgium?!
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Mar 14, 2024 15:38
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Sorry, the correct term is ‘European red wood ant’
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Mar 14, 2024 16:03
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Are they the same guys as this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbS8XSa4V3c ? I've found strays a couple of times and I'm pretty sure one of my jars on the cabinet has a nest - either the log one or the dome one, I frequently find a tiny straggler outside.
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Mar 14, 2024 18:19
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This is what €12 gets you at the thrift store here: glass for the glass hoard, 2 bags of fancy rocks, a bunch of wooden bases/lids and some shapes/possible future ornaments. Now all I need is fresh moss again
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Mar 15, 2024 16:07
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Fishstick posted:
Friendship ended with forest floor Now Flood Plain is my best friend 
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Mar 16, 2024 14:16
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My wife got me this book: looks nice. I'm still trying to make closed terrariums. I just don't have anything yet i would like anyone else to see. Going to a rough time with dad in the hospital. When I came back from the visit to the ICU, I noticed the concrete on the parking lot had some really nice moss growing on it (that they were gonna remove soon anyway), so I took some. I hope I can do something with it.
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Mar 26, 2024 01:23
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I've had these two glass pots kicking around for a while and I finally made it up to my friend's shop to make a collar for them.  Not sure on exactly what I'm going to put in it, but probably some driftwood.
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Mar 27, 2024 00:04
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 In working on one for my dad who’s very sick. The wood is something he found a long time ago on a beach and thanks to goons was identified as a piece of a certain wwII weapon. I’m worried the plants against the glass might get into trouble? Or is that ok? I think I used a bit too much. Still didn’t find any of these fungi eating critters. Fishsticks, if you buy them anywhere near Mechelen in Belgium, please let me know:) thanks.
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Mar 27, 2024 09:20
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