Java Moss Wine bottle advice needed

This was my original post and updates for this idea: Thread 'Aquatic plant wine bottle.' Aquatic plant wine bottle. | Aquarium Plants Forum

This bottle stayed strong for about two years with rarely any top offs needed and a very occasional one drop of Aquarium Co-op's liquid fertilizer.

Over this last winter it completely died. I think it was too close to the window or that and maybe something else.

Anyway, I tried to start over this past summer. I kept the stick in there and it's growing some sort of mold? So I'm going to take it out. Other than that I pretty much neglected it and the little bits of moss I took from my shrimp tank are still alive, but not growing very much.

I'm not sure what kept it going so well for a couple of years and now I'm struggling to recreate it.

Any ideas what I could do? Should I remove the gravel and just change the water out completely every month? Or is there something else I could add?

It did have tiny life forms like copepods and I'd like to have those back again. It made it more interesting and kinda like a mini aquarium for them. (Changing the water out monthly would surely keep them from thriving though if I can get them back).

How did it survive past winters and not this last one? It's in the same place, but was maybe a tiny bit closer to the glass.

Has anyone else done something similar and how did that go?

Any ideas and suggestions are appreciated!

I wouldn’t mind seeing a pic of whatever that is that you think is mould. Sorry, curiosity hasn’t killed me yet .

The closest I’ve come to anything like your wine bottle project is a larger glass vase that holds maybe 1.5G, give or take.

I keep lights close to it but not aimed directly at it or over it and it will never be in a window so I have no idea what that might do to it though I suspect it would become one greenwater in that situation. I was feeding it greenwater because I wanted the copepods I knew were in it to survive and prosper. Worked until my greenwater culture had a little accident (15 pounds of trouble wearing an orange fur suit knocked the culture off the sill!)

I put a plate on top of it to inhibit evaporation and so far, the wee anubias in it has lasted, must be getting on to two years I think, though I fear it has reverted to all green - it was variegated to start with. I haven’t done much by way of water changes - it has not been a good year emotionally and it’s been neglected for that reason.

I can’t help but think that a wine bottle is a very small environment so there might not be a way to keep it going indefinitely without at least some direct interventions periodically, such as water changes and maybe minimal feeding if you want to keep copepods going.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a pic of whatever that is that you think is mould. Sorry, curiosity hasn’t killed me yet .

The closest I’ve come to anything like your wine bottle project is a larger glass vase that holds maybe 1.5G, give or take.

I keep lights close to it but not aimed directly at it or over it and it will never be in a window so I have no idea what that might do to it though I suspect it would become one greenwater in that situation. I was feeding it greenwater because I wanted the copepods I knew were in it to survive and prosper. Worked until my greenwater culture had a little accident (15 pounds of trouble wearing an orange fur suit knocked the culture off the sill!)

I put a plate on top of it to inhibit evaporation and so far, the wee anubias in it has lasted, must be getting on to two years I think, though I fear it has reverted to all green - it was variegated to start with. I haven’t done much by way of water changes - it has not been a good year emotionally and it’s been neglected for that reason.

I can’t help but think that a wine bottle is a very small environment so there might not be a way to keep it going indefinitely without at least some direct interventions periodically, such as water changes and maybe minimal feeding if you want to keep copepods going.

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Already cleaned it out, but this is what it looked like:



Definitely not what I was trying to grow. lol.

I'm looking at my bottle now though with just a little Java Moss I'm trying to grow. There's nothing else in there, but I wonder if I should be worried about this stuff showing up on the plant?

That winter die-off pattern jumped out at me. A bottle on a windowsill is a tiny volume of water, and winter is exactly when small volumes get punished twice: the daylight hours get short and weak, and the glass right against a window runs several degrees colder than the room, especially overnight. Two years of luck can end the first time you get a really cold snap. If it sat "a tiny bit closer to the glass" than before, that alone could have done it — root-zone temps in a couple liters of water swing way faster than in a tank.
On the fuzz: if it's white or grayish and wispy, growing on the wood or on decaying bits, that's almost certainly the usual saprophytic mold bloom. It feeds on dead organics, not on a living plant. It's common in fresh or restarted setups and normally burns itself out once the micro-critters catch up. Pulling the piece out, scrubbing it under hot tap water, and changing most of the water usually knocks it down. If it comes back a second time, something in there is still dying off — often old roots or trapped debris under the gravel.
For what it's worth, I wouldn't strip the gravel or do a full water change monthly if you want the copepods back. Complete teardowns and full changes are what keeps a microfauna colony from ever establishing. A half change now and then, plus keeping the moss and a bit of gunk in there, gives them biofilm and detritus to graze. A tiny pinch of fish food once in a while (or a splash of greenwater, like Fishfur was doing) feeds them without fouling things.
One question that might explain the original run: was the bottle getting any direct winter sun back then? A little weak sun through glass in winter can keep a bottle warm and lit at the same time — a nice combo — but if anything changed with curtains, blinds, or where the bottle sits, that balance would flip fast.

Already cleaned it out, but this is what it looked like:

View attachment 932343View attachment 932344View attachment 932345

Definitely not what I was trying to grow. lol.

I'm looking at my bottle now though with just a little Java Moss I'm trying to grow. There's nothing else in there, but I wonder if I should be worried about this stuff showing up on the plant?

Click to expand...

Looks like saprolegnia, a water mould, which only grows on dead organic matter, which is not what you want to see in this kind of setup.

I keep java moss in my shrimp tank and it is pretty forgiving stuff, so I would not give up on the bottle idea — the fact the first one ran for two years shows it can work. The winter window would be my main suspect too. A bottle that small will chill right down overnight next to cold glass and then warm up again in any sun, which is a lot of swing for moss and for the tiny copepod-type life. Moving it just a foot or so back from the window in winter, so it still gets bright indirect light but not the cold, might help more than changing the water routine. I would also keep changes small and simple rather than stripping it down — those little critters seem to do best when things are left stable and a bit undisturbed. Good luck with the restart, it is a lovely little project.