critters in jars

Hello everyone! I am back on MR
Since I was last lurking around I have been reading many reef books and have started officially working at the Pratt Reef.

I have not started a tank yet but I have been playing around with some jars of saltwater.
Maybe keeping living animals in a jar is a bit cruel...

So I have a jar with two aiptasia anemones in a tiny jar with a dead chunk of coral with coralline algae growing on it and a pinch of chaeto. This jar is about a week old and seems to be doing great. I have grown pretty close to these little cuties.
My second jar is about a dozen asterina stars also with dead coral and chaeto.

I keep a 60watt incandescent desk lamp on these jars during the day.

You should try to see how big you can get the aiptasia to grow, they can get huge. Feed it every day, it will get voracious. They are cool animals when they are not stinging your prized corals.

Now this is taking reefing in another direction

That's a pretty cool experiment you have going there, makes me want to try it myself. You should try the same concept with some large copepods and see if you can easily get a whole colony in a jar with some chaeto

My trash is her treasure

prattreef said:

My trash is her treasure

Click to expand...

Funny post

What ratio of plant to animal life do you think would live in a sealed system?
I think this would be a cool little thing to put in a window at work.

Some macro, a soft coral and some pods.

is that on display next to your tank Randy?

I think the only issue is oxygen depletion. Do you have a fan blowing on the water surface or a bubbler or something?

Could the macro provide enough O2? Have to have a lot of macro and thinking Large pods would be the biggest animals.
In a closed environment would the plant starve of CO2?

I am kind of experimenting to see how long they will stay alive.
There is no fan or bubbler. A few times a day I agitate the water with a stick.
I had a first jar with a large piece of dead coral covered in beautiful bubble algae, a bit of green hair algae, a few brittle stars, and a few asterina. I did not have any kind of light on this jar for about 2 days. All of the brittle stars died very quickly. only one asterina survived. The bubbles have shrunk considerably and have lost most of their green color.

Also I have not feed the aiptasia anything. They are starting to roam around on the branch. I will start feeding them each a single pellet and see how that goes.

Beautiful bubble algae?
Do I see a new specie of macro emerging?

An update on the jars:
the aiptasia have been rather moody due to the extreme temperature in my dorm room. one morning this week it was 40 degrees. I started feeding them a tiny marine pellet a day. They love to eat! After eight days or so I finally did a WC 100%. THey were much happier after that. They are currently living on top of Randy's tank where they can be warm and receive proper light. The smaller aiptasia has traveled to the top of the water line and the larger one now prefers to live under the rock facing the bottom of the jar...

The asterina jar is now also living on top of Randy's tank. There they spend much less time gasping for air at the top of the water. The chaeto has been producing much more oxygen in this lighting so the asterina hang out around it.

I added more chaeto to the aiptasia jar and noticed that the old chaeto is pale in comparison. maybe from the freezing temperatures in my room or from the poor lighting.

last saturday I started a third jar containing some brown zoas, two large aiptasia, a handful of live rock, and chaeto. This was a disaster. the rock had plentiful hitch hikers such as worms and vermetid snails. I am sure many little things died and began decomposing within the first hours. for the sake of observation I let the jar continue to sit under my lamp. The vermetid snails continue to produce an unattractive web everyday. what surprised me is that within three days both of the aiptasia died. I suspect the zoas are stressed and began releasing toxins. The zoas are still alive. I did a WC 100% today, removed the dead critters, added more chaeto, and replaced the established live rock with a few pieces of skeleton. I will continue to see how long the zoas survive.

I have looked at equipment such as a 10g air pump which I would attach a tube with multiple splits in it to so it could provide bubbles for multiple jars. I have also looked at a beta tank warmer. but I am avoiding using any kind of wires and tubes. I feel like they would take away from the magic of the environment.

:bagfish: What happened to them? I haven't seen them for a while.

The asterina jar died over a weekend. I suspect that one of the stars died and the resulting ammonia spike killed the rest.

Today I tossed the zoa jar. it was nasty ):

one of the two aiptasia disappeared. The remaining one is currently attached to a single strand of chaeto and floats around like that.

later tonight I will be ordering the equipment I need to start my first pico. If the final aiptasia can survive until i get water in my tank then he can live there.

I decided I dont have time to give the jars the close attention that they need to thrive.

"disappeared"

You had quite a few jars anyways. I guess there were just experiments.

yah, My goal with the jars was to see how far these critters could be pushed. It was a fun little test.
after a couple weeks I really didnt like the amount of biofilm on the glass, it wasnt aesthetic at all.
The asterina could probably be better kept alive if you make sure none of them die.

Funny I'm actually doing a stagnant water setup also with a small container bc I wanna breed copepods. I put a little chaeto w a piece of LR, and I put in a lot of reef roids (powdered plankton) phytoplankton and flake food. They're multiplying a lot and I wanted to seed my tank w it. (I was gonna make a new thread but i saw this one) so they are doing well but they water smells funky. Does anyone think I cqn just throw this water in my 3g? Its a small plastic soup container.

My reefs app doesn't let me upload pics. Anyone else have this problem?

Don't mean to jack ur thread :/

Sent from my HTC ThunderBolt using Reefs

Could you have cleaned the biofilm, or was it just not worth it.

Beastium, I love that you are also playing with growing in a small container!
How long have you had your set up going? have you done any water changes?
my zoa jar smelled horrible but the others were fine. could be from the amount of food in the water.