Mini fissidens

Care at a glance

Overview

This is a slow, patient moss best glued or tied in small tufts onto rock or fine wood for detail work in nano scapes. Clean water with regular changes plus CO2 and gentle flow speed up what is otherwise a crawling growth rate, and moderate light keeps it dense without inviting algae onto the fine fronds. It is fiddly to attach because the pieces are so small, and it stays rare and pricey for the same slow-growth reason. Keep it cool and stable rather than warm.

In the wild

Mini fissidens is a tiny, unidentified Fissidens species collected around the Sydney area of Australia and parts of Asia, growing on rocks and wood in cool, clean, flowing freshwater. It attaches by fine rhizoids and creeps very slowly across hard surfaces. In nature it hugs damp, shaded stone in seepages and stream margins.

Good to know

It is an undescribed species in the genus Fissidens (family Fissidentaceae), so the trade name 'Mini' stands in for a proper binomial. Fissidens mosses are distinctive because their leaves are arranged in a flat, two-ranked plane with a small pocket-like flap (the vaginant lamina) at the leaf base, unlike most aquarium mosses. Its shoots are shorter and finer than Fissidens nobilis, with even smaller leaflets than Fissidens fontanus, typically only about 1 cm long.

Did you know

Because a single healthy patch can take many months to spread over a rock, mini fissidens is one of the slowest-growing aquarium mosses, which is exactly why established carpets of it command a premium.

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