Stringy java moss?

[fastfly48]

Hi all

I was just trimming my plants and noticed that my java moss is looking very stringy, almost wirey. It's normally quite bushy with lots of bright green hairs (look like hairs anyway ) along the main runners. But these "hairs" have now folded up against the main runners....making the runners look well, not as pretty, bussy etc.

I recently did a 50% water change and I also added some Java moss from another tank into my own tank. But I haven't mixed them, and both are looking stringy. All my water parametres are ok i think...
ph: 6.4 (yes it's low...but this can't affect java moss can it!?)
Co2: about 25
nitrate: very low. perhaps 5. is this a problem?
nitrite and ammonia both 0
My lighting is at 2 watts per gallon (40 watts over a 20g tank)

I didn't think Java moss was very fussy. All my other plants are pretty ok...I've only noticed this change in the apperance in my java moss. Any ideas why this is happening?
I foy uneed more info please ask, though I don't know how to measure the trace elemnts etc...

Many thanks in advance.
Ry.

 

[PBirdsong]

Can you get a photo? I was going to guess hair algae, but you're injecting CO2 . . .

 

[fastfly48]

No it's certainly not hair algae...already got a smidge of that

I can't seem to get my photos working on here anymore. i remeber getting one up but since then I haven't been able to. something about the size, but I don't know how to reduce the size! eek.

The moss is still looking dodge. It's growing REALLY slowly now with only about half a few millimetres of fresh green growth a day.

Puzzled.
Ry.

 

[GlitcH]

I can't seem to get my photos working on here anymore. i remeber getting one up but since then I haven't been able to. something about the size, but I don't know how to reduce the size! eek.

I see a lot of people with this problem.
There are many ways to reduce the size of your pictures.
First option you may have is to use an "email size" setting on your camera.
Some but certainly not all cameras have this option.
If your camera has this option the resulting picture is usually small enough to just upload straight from the camera.

Second, if you have winxp, microsoft offers a free "power tool" for picture reducing here...
http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/ImageResizerPowertoySetup.exe

And another option is this free third party program...
http://www.webdigger.net/resizer.exe

HTH
GlitcH[/url]

 

[fastfly48]

thanks.

Ok, so does ANYone else know why my java moss is now stringy?

Ry...

 

[An t-iasg]

I could take a guess - try to raise your nitrates to 10 ppm. That may help with the hair algae too. My lighting and CO2 is about the same as yours.

Do you "fluff it up" every week? I take my clump out of the tank during a water change so it doesn't float all over the place. I gently pull apart the clump and rotate it around to make sure the water can get to all of the moss. Every once in a while I will find a dead black spot or a hard, stiff black thread that I will remove. My moss isn't a fast grower, but I can tell that it is growing. Just try to spread it apart a bit - don't let it stick to itself or clump up on itself too much, because water can't get into a thick tangle of moss and that's where you may be seeing the black areas.