Hi! Was tasked to create our own ecosphere and am totally a newbie to this. I had just made mine a few days prior (3) but has yet to close it because my worksheet said that I should let the plants acclimate to the water.
That being said, since there is no good freshwater/seawater sources near us, I opted for treated tapwater (with anti-chlorine) and bought some aquatic plants to use. Respectively, java moss, anubias (?), and elodea (?)*(the seller told me these were their names and I researched it and said they were good for ecospheres). The tank is 4x6x4 in size and can hold at least 1 to 1.5 gallons. It has a design because I asked to have it and not bought 😅. I have also yet to put a consumer, which is supposed to be a single nerite snail (already have one prepared to put in), and am just waiting for a few days. I also placed a cool looking driftwood inside for aesthetic purposes.
The water looks like that because I replaced it due to the smell, and thought that maybe there was too many plants so I removed and trimmed some leaves. I have yet to see any organisms inside other than worms on the surface (that I removed, because it looked like mosquitoe larvae rather than detritus worms).
That being said, I am really open to any advice or constructive criticisms to it. If there is anything wrong or I should do to keep it smoothly going. Any help is really appreciated, as I am also just a fellow student who wants to pass their course on evol. bio. Thanks!! 🙏
by qashmeir
1 Comment
When you create an aquatic environment like this, it’s going to cycle for a while, meaning it’s going to have unstable boom and bust cycles of different parts of the ecosystem until it reaches a more stable point.
Depending on what’s in there and how much, this can take quite a while, up to a month or more in extreme cases. Usually while this is going on, you’ll be getting a ton of swamp gasses from the bacteria in the sediment breaking down the initial organic waste, which smell terrible. You can tell when the cycling has stabilised, because it’ll stop smelling terrible.
There are two ways people work with this here from what I can tell;
a) Stagger adding different things to the system over time, and waiting for the whole system to stabilise before sealing. You could probably find some copepods and ostracods somewhere to add now, wait for the system to stabilise and then add your snail and close it.
b) yolo everything in, and hope that there’s not enough excess of anything to cause the cycling to wipe out part of the system. This definitely can work, especially if you’ve made a few before and have a good idea of exactly what’s going in, but it obviously has a higher failure rate and is not very forgiving of mistakes.
My advice would be to leave the water, avoid making changes, and monitor progress. Wait for still and clear water, and try to find some microfauna to add in the meantime. When the water is completely clear, add your snail and seal. In the meantime, cover the top, but leave a very narrow opening for gas exchange, as you want to minimise evaporation as much as possible.
If I were making this, I’d probably start with less plant mass, and a bit more water, leaving at most 25% air gap, but more likely around ~20%