My New Native Ecosphere

Inspired by the YouTube channel "Life In Jars", I took a few plants, some muck, and some pond snails, and dropped them into an air tight jar. This is my attempt at building a closed ecosystem. Nothing will leave, and nothing will enter the jar after I sealed it closed. The neat thing about this type of environment is that it is fully self sustaining. The snails, worms and copepods eat algae and detritus, turning it into fertilizer for the algae and plants. They also give the plants and algae CO2, which the plants and algae then convert back into O2 that is breathable by the invertebrates in the jar.

At first I only saw little swimming worms in the jar. Midge Larvae? I also added some pond snails from my aquarium to help control the algae. about a week in, A copepod population erupted into action, probably hatching thanks to being in a heated home which mimicked warm weather. I see them hopping around on the glass and algae.

Also over the course of the first week, it cleared up as clay and mud settled on the bottom of the jar. This cleared the water up, and created a substrate layer for the plants to root in. (time lapse above).

By The 25th, The Plants (yet to be identified) are flourishing. I think the small one is an invasive "parrot's feather". Every day, they all get about 13 hours of desk lamp light. They are beginning to get overgrown. I can not open the jar and trim them because that would ruin the whole point of the experiment. I am going to let the plants grow as much as they can. In the river they are from, they would eventually control their own population by shading all the lower plants. I am going to keep the light up to let them get to this point of maximum growth.

The midge larva have been metamorphosing into adult midges, but due to the no interference rule, i can't open the jar back up. They are going to starve or drown in the air pocket at the top of the jar. Dead midges are now floating on the water's surface, feeding their nutrients back into the water through decomposition. The baby snails have now grown up and probably have lain some eggs.