DaElf's Impossible Bottle themed Pico

[DaElf]

Ps bear in mind the bottle is distorting the view, making the rock look a little bigger then it really is.
(but only a little lol)

[DaElf]

Ok this is it looked this morning having settling down over night



And check out the size of this bristle worm,

[DaElf]

Ok yes I know that bristle worms work as part of the cuc,
but considering the size of the bottle and these guys I've started to pull the ones I can out.
(I've pulled at least 3 that were over 6 inchs long)

However they just keep coming out of the rock... There are a stack of them, the couple pictured I pulled out last night,
and then by this morning there were a stack more out on the sand bed. Anyone have any suggestions to get rid of them?
(remembering that the bottle is not the easiest to get a hand in and around....)



Also it turns out that I will be needing an airstone in the bottle,
I was holding off to see how it would go with just the small pump, but the top had a film set across it this morning.
So I'll pick up an airstone this afternoon to try and stop this, and I'll being flushing the water a couple of times over the weekend.

[DaElf]

Ok just a quick update for anyone playig along at home.

The Airstone works great, and really does turn the bottle into it's own skimmer,
so all I do it wipe the top to get rid of the skim.

Also I've flushed the bottle with NSW a couple of times now to get rid of some junk that was on the rock.
It appears to be settling down a bit now, however it doing this I realised that I may have miscalculated the water volume.
After draining the water to the sand, it only took about 3.5 litres to fill back up. However as its difficult to work out the total volume,
I'm going to keep saying it's 5 Litres.

[DaElf]

Quick update



I'm waiting for the levels to even out a bit, but I may be putting the first bit of coral in on the weekend.
(all going to plan that is)

[DaElf]

Wow reading through all of the other comp threads I feel like I'm a little behind.

So many people have been able to start stocking tanks already..

Meanwhile I've been waiting and waiting for the levels in my bottle to smooth out,
and I they held pretty good over the weekend. I seemed to be having a big ammonia problem,
which was just creating more and more die off.

Everything I've read about reef vases seems to go against what is done with the bigger setups.
Firstly they don't usually cycle, using cured LR etc, there normally isn't any real cycle. However my rock was in and out of water a lot
during the sealing up of the bottom, so I started to get a lot of die off, so I had to keep doing water changes so that it would stop creating more die off.
As it's only 1 bit of rock, it wasn't enough to convert all the ammonia before it started to kill other things etc. (if that doesn't make sense let me know and I'll rephrase)

Also water changes, you'd think doing 100% changes would stress everything,
but when it comes to a vase style this is the only way to keep it stable. You feed it, them 100% change thus removing any food that wasn't consumed.

There are a lot more things I've read about vases that have really got me thinking about why this sort of setup could work very well.
But ultimately time will tell.

Some local supplies are getting in some tiny bits of coral for me, so fingers crossed and I should be able to start stocking very soon.

[MeLLeR]

Its funny isnt it how different tanks cycle so differently. Id just be patient and keep doing water changes and monitoring params. I think in tanks so small good cycling to establish a bacterially driven system is essential to avoid algal issues down the road.

FWIW i intend on averaging ~300% water changes per week, obviously broken down into multiple changes per week .

[DaElf]

Its funny isnt it how different tanks cycle so differently. Id just be patient and keep doing water changes and monitoring params. I think in tanks so small good cycling to establish a bacterially driven system is essential to avoid algal issues down the road.

FWIW i intend on averaging ~300% water changes per week, obviously broken down into multiple changes per week .

300% a week, what size tank are you going for?

Yeah the ammonia in the bottle has been sitting at zero since friday, so it's pretty close to be being ready.
Also it appears I've just found one of the bits of coral I've been chasing to go in, fingers crossed.

[DaElf]

Ok so I picked up my first frag I was going to put in the bottle yesterday,
however a quick check of the temp showed the bottle was sitting at 32 degrees at 5pm......

Not too sure what cooling options will really work for the bottle,
It will be moved this afternoon to the coldest room in the house,
and if that doesn't drop it enough, I may have to resort to leaving it in the aircon.

[Curious_Chaos]

Dude, get yourself some forceps- then you won't have to stick your hand in

That's what I do with mine :D