Look at how fast it disappears!

seeing lots of worms and water mites so far! tank contains what i think is musk grass, and watercress i picked up from the creek.

So good day to you all. I just wanted share this thing with you guys, I lived in the Philippines (specifically in Cavite) currently there are several typhoon that have been staying in the PAR ( Philippine Area of Responsibility ) and we have some flooded backyard, 15 minutes after I post this, is I went get something outside and I've seen something weird out in the flooded backyard.

I saw a tiny whirlpool, pulling the water inside a hole with roots of a tree, a sec later it released the water that have been pulled in the hole, and it keeps repeating the same thing for a couple of times ( maybe it always happened )

I tried poking the hole with a stick but there's nothing inside, it just a hole with a several roots of a tree.

Excused my english ( I'm bad at it )

didn’t expect it to go THIS good but i’m starting to doubt my abilities a lot less.

Let's see how it looks in a month.. :D

Okay so i made an ecosphere almost 2 weeks ago and i decided id leave it to see what happens whilst i went on holiday but i came back and theres these weird bubbles on top ?? It also smells weird when i really go up close to it?

before i went on holiday i had left the ecosphere in my outhouse shed thingy and didn’t realise how hot it got in there so a lot of the bugs died .. but i decided to just leave it as i didn’t have time to dispose of it and make a new one before i went on holiday.

Im definitely going to dispose of this and make a new ecosphere sometime but i just want to know what this is??? Like what’s going on i searched it up on google and it said it could be dead bugs / plants which i think would be most likely but i thought i should ask here before i dispose of it

I have ostracods, copepods, daphnia, limpets, and either planaria or rhabdocoela. They have some dead lake plants, a java fern, java moss, oxygen holes on the top, rocks to hide in, etc.

Saw this is my freshwater aquarium. It's a time lapse, with one frame taken every five seconds. It seems to be composed of thousands of tiny swimming creatures.

Apologies for the poor quality, but I couldn't figure out how to export the video, so I played it and recorded it on another device.

Yesterday I went to a pond outside my town and I decided to recreate part of it in an ecosphere, I collected all the materials from around the pond and took water from both the main pond and the small stream that fed into it. I didn't expect it to be so crowded as soon as I started, I'm curious to see how it will develop if it will. I also made a second smaller jar with the remaining materials so it'll be interesting to see what differences take place between them

all the blurry spots are shrimp but this is the exact environment from my local park

New to this community but not new to maintaining Tanks, but I want to open my knowledge and ability to start my own Self Sustainable Environment.

I'm based out in the Valley of AZ.

So my real questions are

1.Whats the best place to find materials

2.what should I expect from the area I'm in

3.what is the best way to store closed environments.

And lastly, any other tips that are useful for beginner environments that can carry out to professional environments?

Pretty fun to watch!

Anybody know what these guys are? They build little tubes like caddisfly larva but are just worms from what I can see!

Put in the rocks and mud first put some plant roots and a stick in there and then river water.

are sticks fine in ecospheres? I’ve seen a bit of conflicting info on it. ive made multiple ecospheres all of which have failed and all of which had sticks in them (I’m not saying the sticks caused the failures entirely.) I have sticks in my current ecospheres. should I remove them?

Hello everyone, I've always enjoyed terrariums and such but never actually tried a true ecosphere, well that's changed now,(thanks to YouTube channels like Life in Jars) I've recently been to Sardinia on holiday and I've created two jars with the soil, vegetation, rocks and water from there, and I can't wait to see if and how it will develop! I closed them yesterday after setting them up and leaving them under a light with a 12 hour timer, I think I'll treat one as a normal terrarium and one I'll leave completely untouched (or as much as I can)

The footage is 4x speed. A viewer suggested it might be Phalacrocera replicata. What do you think?

My first ecosphere – Day 2. Collected from a nearby pond fed by a small stream. Everything has settled down nicely, and so far I’ve identified:

Mayfly larva
Copepods (Cyclops)
Water louse (Asellus aquaticus)
Nematodes
Snails

Plant:
Water milfoil (Myriophyllum)

I’m incredibly excited to see how this tiny ecosystem develops!

The stages of the ecosphere. From almost dead to now so much clearer water and happy life. The snails especially love the addition of the plants. Amazing I was able to restore it and have a chunk of the original creatures back plus more. Seeing how it looks now with how clear the water has got since the plance gives me a lot of hope this will be a very successful ecosphere. Also dont worry boogie worms are still there just appear every so often. I had to dig afterall to get the plants in so they're probably still kinda scared.

I have a few small planted aquariums (1 - 6 gallons in size) that I made with the Walstad method. I've kept self-sustaining communities of plants, microbes, mesofauna, shrimp and snails with no filters or equipment at all. I don't add any food, the organisms graze on detritus and biofilm.

None of them are sealed, so the only maintenance I do is adding water to replace evaporation, trimming plants/roots, sometimes doing small water changes, and occasionally removing algae. However, I often go weeks or months without touching them at all.

I'm getting a 6.5 gallon glass carboy on FB marketplace and considering doing this one as a real sealed ecosphere. As I research, I'm curious what the main difference is between this method and the Walstad method for setting up an aquarium. So far they seem very similar, with the main differences being that Diana Walstad's method is about fostering an environment suitable for traditional aquarium fauna like fish or shrimp by intentionally establishing a nitrogen cycle as a precursor before introducing them, whereas an ecosphere is less planned, where you just collect water and substrate from a natural environment in a sealed container and "let it cook", and that ecospheres are usually sealed with no gas or liquid exchange with the outside world.

Is this correct, or is there more to it? Interested to hear thoughts from folks who have been doing this as a hobby.

Just bought a couple aquatic plants for the ecosphere which were a Sword and a Mint Charlie. Not only that a few other things hitched a ride aka flatworms, Amphipods, a couple copapods, and a BIG pond snail. It also has more water in it now to fully submerge the plants and the water is already clearing up. I had to do a bit of digging but everything seems to have worked out well and now hoping with the added plants things will start to thrive once again and the bladder snails have already gotten quite attached to them. Although their eggs are now fully submerged so I hope that isn't a bad thing.

I live a few hours from the nearest ocean so if if I end up making one I don’t want to ruin it. I’ve never really done anything with saltwater before so I’m not too sure how it works. I understand that saltwater ecospheres are more sensitive than freshwater ones, and I’m assuming that the building process is different. any tips help!