kris23

A sealed 5 Quart system of sustainability...

This is a sealed ecosystem that was inspired by those little "ecosphere" glass eggs and a magazine article... all rolled up and taken a bit further....

This jar has been running for about a week now with no interference, the only energy being inputted is light from a 12w Cree MC-E LED and reflector optic on top of the jar.

Two Amano shrimp live among the hornwort, driftwood and Marimo algae of the jar.

Various types of freshwater phytoplankton and nitrifying bacteria live in this jar as part of the waste processing system.

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IvanV

Dude this is amazing! Makes me wanna go get a jar. Keep it long enough and maybe you'll get intelligent shrimp which will debate on whether there is Kris and did life come from outside the jar.

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If anyone has Portal 2 and hasn't played the co-op and wants to do me a favour, let me know (PM me or whatever).

kris23

haha yea makes you wonder what goes on in the minds of creatures in this sort of situation...

so far just by looking at the apparent health of the system, it could go several months before locking up.

ideally i would want it to last the lifetime of the shrimps within which is about 3 years... but the odds of that are slim. either way, i will intervene if there are difficulties.

with 16 hours of light, you can see the plants actively bubbling and producing oxygen showing an active ecosystem at work.

the idea came from an article i saw on wikipedia on the ecosphere aquarium eggs...

http://cdn.makezine.com/make/wp_aquanaut.pdf

most simply, i took the idea, dumped more resources into and am hoping to attain a better time than the few months listed for the jar in the article.

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Falstaff

awesome man...
I love this stuff
reminds me of the terrariums when I was a kid, and the microbiota you had to identify in science class, from single cell all the way up to water striders...
Soooooo Cooooooool

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PruritusAni

So you're a benevolent kind of god? Be careful that the 2 shrimps don't become overly dependent on your miracles to solve all of their lives' problems.

I will be watching this thread to monitor the budding shrimp civilization.

IvanV

There's a funny episode of Futurama in which Bender becomes God to some small creatures living on him, it's worth a look if you can find it.

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If anyone has Portal 2 and hasn't played the co-op and wants to do me a favour, let me know (PM me or whatever).

Falstaff

Isnt that the episode that you feel sorry for Bender?

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mcdragon2

looks like fun. would be interesting if the shrimp mated

kris23

the jar would be far too small to sustain a large population... but the issue with amano shrimp is that the larvae require brackish to full saltwater in order to grow for some reason...

so unless the jar became a brackish microcosm (not going to happen because of the lower oxygen saturation and lack of plantlife that can live in such waters) the larvae survival rate is very slim....

if they happened to mate and produce eggs, id probably pull them out and set up a saltwater rearing tank for them...

tank bred amano shrimp are a rare sight in the aquarium hobby...

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mcdragon2

thats very interesting kris

charm_quark

truly interesting, but cool

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Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he has not got much of a bark
And sure any he has it's all beside the mark.
—James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

asedsa

Oooooooooo totally cool

Judas

my sisters been doing this for a few years and selling the results... to people that want them..

it is quite good..

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kris23

so after 2 weeks, i cracked open the jar (the lid after being sealed for so long was VERY hard to pull apart) and decided to do a little maintenance...

when i finally got the lid open, i found that various insects were living in the air-pocket above the water, green pond flies flew out and i was greeted by an aquatic spider.... not being something i want in the jar, i took them outside.

for the maintenance, a section of the hornwort began to yellow and die so i cut it off.

on top of that, i also took care of a small algae infestation that was beginning to block off too much light.

once that was all done, i changed a bit of water and sealed it back up.

as you can see, the hornwort got A LOT bigger...





the nice thing that i found out, is that even after sitting sealed for 2 weeks, the water did not have even the slightest smell of decaying odor.

While i do not have a test kit to confirm this, since there is no activated carbon in the jar, the lack of odor generally means that the water is actively being filtered by natural means.

the next time i will go in the jar is probably going to be in another few weeks to trim the hornwort again (more than likely the dead plant mass that occurred came from the plant purging itself of excess mass due to lack of CO2.)

Thanks to the information given by the plants, it seems i can throw a few more critters in the jar. Ill probably get another shrimp and a few snails...

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Falstaff

did you measure the gases or were you trying to achieve a ration that would sustain the organic components? Would a snail have upset the balance.
Did you harvest the original life forms from a naturally formed lake or stream?
In Nevada, we have bacteria that thrive on heavy metals that naturally precipitate from hot springs and dissolve from the playa and remain with alkaline deposits in the thinnest layer of the bottom of ponds and water basins, but life prospers and we even have insects too.
In Mono lake for instance, the waters and minerals remain in some kind of balance, much like the Salton sea in California, even though they dont recieve any water anymore and rely rain, etc.
Where you live, did you choose tap water or actual pond or lake?

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kris23

i actually purchased everything from the plants, to the decor, to the organisms from nurseries and aquacultures.

The thing is that i dont really like just going into a nearby pond and scooping out sludge because im not 100% sure of whats in them... parasites can be rather annoying

i have no tools for accurate measurement so i can only go with an educated guess...

since there is a high amount of light and nutrients, the lack of CO2 must be the only issue since if all three conditions are met, i should generally have healthy plants.

Ill probably test it by temporarily unsealing the jar and pumping very small amounts of CO2 probably from some vinegar and baking soda through a tube.

though i will use the currently unpopulated jar to test this.

For water, i used dechlorinated tap water that sat in the jar for a few days before adding the shrimp, the jar itself had already been cycled beforehand using water from my cichlid pond (really a 1000 gallon liner tank with fish) so there was already an established bio-filter. the tap-water was just to get rid of any excess nitrates for the safety of the shrimp.

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Falstaff

quite fascinating though...I had an interest as a boy in school..but I still have an keen eye for this...good work old man.

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kris23

haha thanks i will be pruning the jars until i can find the right balance of plant-life to inhabitants... even with the slowly occurring die-off, the jar is still quite healthy.

i went with a yeast fermentation method of CO2 production for the uninhabited jar, if i see positive results, i know exactly what to do.

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kris23

After watching my jars and doing MORE research, i found out that the reason the hornwort was slowly dying was because of a nutrient deficiency....

apparently the plant is capable of consuming nitrates faster than most aquaria can produce them, and since the plant seems to have such a high metabolic rate, it begins to die of starvation once it clears out the water.....

after figuring this out, i basically started pouring nitrate rich water into the jars (ironically the opposite of what most aquarists should be doing) and i saw immediate positive results, plants bubbling and a return of color.

the uninhabited jar quickly regained its green color thanks to the intense light and CO2 present along with the nitrates.

so now, im looking into some good plant fertilizer (safe pond scum or a time release tab), and a more optimal stocking level for these jars, seems more than 2 shrimp and several large snails are possible.

if the plant can be fed enough, even a small fish can be housed in these jars!

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mcdragon2

wow man seems like you've got a project on your hands here good luck figuring out the balance

kris23

its a really fun project... i basically got into electronics and fish-keeping at approximately the same time at a really young age and this is the result of everything i learned so far...

im currently studying to be a computer engineer but this sort of thing probably reflects something in the environmental or agricultural engineering fields... just goes to show that i still have options...

combining basic engineering concepts with biology apparently produces manmade ecosystems...

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Falstaff

does temperature change the rate of metabolism?
and what is the ph of the water normally?
bet its still alkaline right?

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kris23

No, hornwort suffers no effects at any temp that one would experience indoors. Its basically active up to freezing.

The ph is stable at 8.0+ (no tests but crushed coral gives about 8.5 usually)

Hornwort may fare better in neutral water but the uninhabited jar is exactly the same in terms of setup and its doing very well with just some co2 and nitrate rich water.

Its known to do well in all water conditions, just needs to be fed.

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Falstaff

do you wish to scale up then? and can you substitute the nitrate producers?

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kris23

it seems to be fine, but i just had to add some pond sludge to keep the plants fertilized so far, the hornwort's activity has increased after the addition of a few things...

i rearranged the jar, added a few more marimo algae balls, and added plant food tabs with pond sludge to see if i can provide a stable source of nutrients for the plants.

with all the added stuff, i rarely see the shrimp... but so far it seems very healthy! the hornwort is releasing a massive amount of oxygen and the shrimp are very active within the dark crevices of the jar.







only time will tell if there is still more to be done... the jar now looks like a small section of a densely planted aquarium...

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Falstaff

Are you doing in morphology on the changing one celled life in the jar, or do you believe it is predominantly plant vs animal, if there is a distinction?
My father bought me a microscope when I was a lad, and my brother and i studied plants for the most part as we learned photosynthesis in primary school. I fondly recall him shining the images from the microscope on the wall and comparing it to different animals too.
We even found bacteria in reconstituted soils from dry lake beds..All very fascintating stuff.
I bet you have a telescope to eh?

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kris23

I wish i had a microscope... would be pretty fun to use. however ones used in actual scientific institutions cost a lot of money...

the jar was put together mainly with the plants and large organisms in mind. while the bacteria and algae dwelling in the jar are very important, they are also very durable.

the cultures of single-celled life are far more resilient as a whole compared to a more complex organism like the shrimp or snails. usually, natural conditions that would kill the larger life-forms would hardly put a dent into the simpler ones.

generally, the evolution and adaptation of single-celled organisms tends to be more rapid than that of complex organisms.

it would be nice to observe, but since i cannot observe them, i will just have to settle with knowing that they're in there somewhere and focus on factors i can observe like the plants and animals foraging through the jar.

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Falstaff

A jewellers loupe would be a big too large, and I suppose you really need a stage, a light and a 100x magnifier to even appreciate the plants life. I have several microscopes, I wish I could send you one, they are bloody cheap nowadays.

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kris23

i guess one of these days, i will go and get me a nice one... but it probably wont be anytime soon...

just looking around, i see i can get a decent one of solid construction for about $250. not too bad, and if i can get some benefit from using it then it'll be worth it.

then i can look into just what goes on in these jars (or anywhere else for that matter) in detail...

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Falstaff

Well old man, I shall rummage about in the storage locker and see if I can find the old microscope...you have sparked my interest again. I have a Three year old grandson I want to show a bit of this to.
Thanx Kris.

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