2-months in and things seem to be progressing well. Just a couple of updates from last time I posted:
Last time, I mentioned that I had a lot of damselflies in the ecosphere, and unfortunately, the problem did not resolve itself. With the damselflies getting larger (some were already 1-2 inches long) and likely to begin feasting in the scuds, I decided to intervene and open the jar to scoop the damselflies out after seeing the two remaining damselflies out and about, an opportunity unlikely to repeat itself. Plus, it was a good check to see the condition my ecosphere was in post-sealing, and well, it passed the smell test (smelled perfectly normal). Anyways, I was a bit concerned that I had accidentally deoxygenated the ecosphere because when I had opened it up, there was a lot of bubbling and the scuds were hanging by the surface when I resealed the ecosphere, but it’s been a week and so far, everything seems to have survived.
There has been a large increase in life in the ecosphere. Lots of hydras float on the surface and the number of non-microscopic ostracods has increased from 2 to about 5-10, with uncountable numbers of copepods. Whenever I squint really hard, I can see lots of tiny things floating in the water column, and even though they’re barely visible, based on their movement, it’s easy to tell whether they’re ostracods or copepods. Outside of that, I found a new snail species in the jar. I believe it’s a ramshorn or some other spiral shaped freshwater snail. On the surface of the water, there are lots of translucent worms that cling to the glass. I’m not sure what species they are but they seem very determined in not venturing below. And of course, the most interesting find was a larvae of the Halipidae (crawling water beetles), which was a very cool find. As an herbivorous, algae-consuming aquatic beetle, it’ll be interesting to see whether it’d be able to survive long-term in ecosphere.
In removing the damselflies, I did damage some of the plants, but supposedly the thin, feathery plant is an Eurasian waterfoil and highly invasive, growing from stem breakage, so I think it’ll recover. When I went on vacation, there was huge increase in algae growth, but I think that’s because I didn’t realize the jar was getting direct sunlight in the early mornings. Since I’ve moved it, the hair algae has been slowly dissolving away, clearing up the view. Outside of that, although all of the horned pondweed with seeds have died, those that haven’t produced any seeds have been doing well recently, growing quite rapidly in the ecosphere.
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2-months in and things seem to be progressing well. Just a couple of updates from last time I posted:
Last time, I mentioned that I had a lot of damselflies in the ecosphere, and unfortunately, the problem did not resolve itself. With the damselflies getting larger (some were already 1-2 inches long) and likely to begin feasting in the scuds, I decided to intervene and open the jar to scoop the damselflies out after seeing the two remaining damselflies out and about, an opportunity unlikely to repeat itself. Plus, it was a good check to see the condition my ecosphere was in post-sealing, and well, it passed the smell test (smelled perfectly normal). Anyways, I was a bit concerned that I had accidentally deoxygenated the ecosphere because when I had opened it up, there was a lot of bubbling and the scuds were hanging by the surface when I resealed the ecosphere, but it’s been a week and so far, everything seems to have survived.
There has been a large increase in life in the ecosphere. Lots of hydras float on the surface and the number of non-microscopic ostracods has increased from 2 to about 5-10, with uncountable numbers of copepods. Whenever I squint really hard, I can see lots of tiny things floating in the water column, and even though they’re barely visible, based on their movement, it’s easy to tell whether they’re ostracods or copepods. Outside of that, I found a new snail species in the jar. I believe it’s a ramshorn or some other spiral shaped freshwater snail. On the surface of the water, there are lots of translucent worms that cling to the glass. I’m not sure what species they are but they seem very determined in not venturing below. And of course, the most interesting find was a larvae of the Halipidae (crawling water beetles), which was a very cool find. As an herbivorous, algae-consuming aquatic beetle, it’ll be interesting to see whether it’d be able to survive long-term in ecosphere.
In removing the damselflies, I did damage some of the plants, but supposedly the thin, feathery plant is an Eurasian waterfoil and highly invasive, growing from stem breakage, so I think it’ll recover. When I went on vacation, there was huge increase in algae growth, but I think that’s because I didn’t realize the jar was getting direct sunlight in the early mornings. Since I’ve moved it, the hair algae has been slowly dissolving away, clearing up the view. Outside of that, although all of the horned pondweed with seeds have died, those that haven’t produced any seeds have been doing well recently, growing quite rapidly in the ecosphere.