Java Moss Wine bottle advice needed

[fishywoo]

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!

 

[Fishfur]

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.

 

[fishywoo]

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.

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?

 

[yulongtang]

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.

 

[Fishfur]

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?

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.

 

[MattPothOCarry]

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.