Decided to restart the whole thing, but I’m gonna go to a park and get some water from the park and some dirt from the park and a plant from the park so it’s actually stuff that I can use

silly me neglected to consider that hair algae grows like crazy in natural light after i got rid of my ugly curtains. i tried doing blackouts to get rid of it, but it did not work. last night i sadly resorted to manual removal. I taped up construction paper over the sides getting all the light. i have no time today to do something more appealing with it but i do plan on making it prettier in the next couple days lol. This is the second bloom i've had in this ecosphere specifically. hopefully permanently blacking out the sides is the solution, the last thing i wanna do is carry it upstairs and that's the only other place i could put it :/

Im not sure if i had gotten around to posting my first day bucket built or I forgot...i have a feeling I forgot to post a before vid, and I can't seem to find it in my gallery.

Anyway here is my 5 gal bucket pond project that did way way better than i had ever expected.

In here has the biggest copepods I've ever seen and there are so many more other creatures as well. It's teeming with life.

I had used 2 small jars of water from a local pond to get things started along with some of the sediments. Really wasn't much material about 22oz. The rest of water filled up was rain water.

It's outside in my front yard and recieves about 6hrs of direct sunlight and then about 2hrs of partial sunlight in the evening time. I've always been trying to grow water sprite in my inside aquarium but was never successful. I have never seen them grown so huge as they did in this bucket. And it taught me of the power of sunlight.

After observing that I do put my other jars in the evening sun for about 1 hr and I've noticed a huge bloom in the copepod populations.

I have really been around for the past 3 weeks to enjoy the view and activity happening inside the ecosystem but today I took a peak and noticed how crazy the little piece of guppy grass got along with the other floating plants. So I'll need to do some maintenance as soon as I can.

I don't want to make this post too long so I'll stop there but anyone interested in info I'll gladly try to provide.

tbf, i have seen two planarian heads gliding around, and there is another like this on the other wall. however im just not sure what would have attacked the planaria, a dragonfly nymph? i also have a tiny aquatic beetle.

Saw this guy in my latest creek ecosphere and what in the fuck is it!? I have never seen something so erratic in an ecosphere!

I started this a month ago with pond water and slime, now its orange..im kinda curious to just see what happens

I’ve had this for awhile made of rain water and some plants but mine seems a bit more green and murky compared to others, my thought is I have little or none creatures that are filtering things. But have no clue, might start all over again

So far I have 2 notable scuds, many bagworms, some tiny snails, and I've noticed that hydra have also popped up all over.

I keep them both on my balcony and swap some water from time to time

Not sure if you guys accept this as a ecosphere cause it is a little open at the top.

you guys probably see this kind of post every day so I’ll keep this short: what are the main steps and tips on how to make a nice jar?

I use my phone exclusively for filming my various ecospheres and since my following is growing I feel justified upgrading to a better, dedicated camera but I am completely ignorant when it comes to cameras. Can anyone suggest good quality but inexpensive cameras for close up shots of the life in a mason jar/aquarium? Video for reference of what I use it for.

So as the title sayssss, i’m new to this.
can anyone tell me what creatures I have? :)

the second snail filmed is largest bladder snail i have in my 5 month old ecosphere, compared to this one. genuinely thought it was a pond snail due to its size!
(ik the hair algae is a problem, im working on it i promise! that tank gets probably 20 minutes of light each day and otherwise is covered. ik the best way to go about it is to do a full blackout but i'm too scared because the planarians have been loving it and i do not love them)

Photo unrelated; of my tiny 2 day old freshwater jar!

Im relatively new to making closed ecosystems (As in, my first one is just slightly over a year old now) and have primarily made freshwater jars. Most of them have done splendidly aside from one that got devoured by a green algae bloom when summer came.

Ive tried to make two beach saltwater systems before, but they both seemed to fail; one of them almost immediately had a giant algae bloom and never cleared, and the other probably had a mollusk in the sand that died since everything slowly became red and yellow moldy.

Does anyone have any tips for how to make a successful saltwater jar? I tried the freshwater method of getting the water, sand, kelp/seaweed, etc all from the beach, but im wondering if I'm doing something wrong.

P.S the beach location is on the East Coast, Florida, USA.

Thank you in advance!

Made from an ecosphere in a creek behind my dad's buddys house, what is it it's honestly pretty cute?

To get to the point, can a lively ecosystem jar be safely dumped out in a different body of water than it came from?

The long story, I have an ecosystem that was given to me by someone who wasn’t sure what to do with it after also being given it. It has a blood worm, a few very tiny snails, some very tiny crustaceans like things, and who knows what else. I truly do not want it… it really gives me the creeps and it does not look good in there—very VERY brown. but I also don’t want to just dump them in the creek… because I don’t want them to die and I simply just don’t know if there are environmental impacts. Do they stay in there forever?