I wish we could get a better close up view, but they move so fast that the camera has a tough time with them at this size focusing and not blurring all the little details. Down the road we might be able to get a better view as they get a bit larger- but this ecosphere didn't do too well for the brine shrimp sadly. We have tons more though, so it's not a complete loss- we're going to try and rethink our ecosphere setup because we know we did something wrong since the ones left in the hatchery are still doing great. We're glad you enjoyed our video!
So eerie. I was literally done with a saltwater copepods + chaetomorpha ecosphere when your video dropped! Great video as usual! Try adding tiger pods in yours maybe, apparently chaetomorpha is their favorite habitat!
Our brine shrimp ecosphere didn't work out all that well, a lot of the brine shrimp died off, we're going to do an update tomorrow going over it as well as all our other ecospheres. It's not all bad though. I'll consider some of those though for when we get the saltwater ecosphere working a bit better.
Thanks, we'd show it off more but sadly trash winds up in it a lot even when we clean it up shortly after new things appear in there. It's a real shame. We love all the wildlife we see around the water though!
You definitely can, marimos actually originate in salt and brine water, though they also do well in fresh. We have been planning actually to use a marimo for the next one we attempt.
+Emerson White chances are pretty good even if they stayed small they wouldn't survive in this ecosphere so I'm still glad we rehomed the lil critter. The brine shrimp didn't make it sadly but we found amphipods alive inside this ecosphere so maybe it's not all bad.
We gave it to a person locally with a saltwater tank, and if it does get larger and they can find it they're ok with us coming over and shooting a video about it down the road with an update but it's hard to say what will happen. It was a really awesome starfish but we have no experience with saltwater and didn't have an established tank- so handing it over to someone with more experience was the right thing to do.
We don't actually own a microscope, this video used our old Olympus along with a few cheap extension tubes. Honestly though we got better footage from the clip on macro lens we bought for our phones. We used it in this Macro Monday video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-w2Wem9vNPU4.html. Honestly I'd recommend it to anyone with a phone since the quality is on par with what we were getting for our more expensive camera for the low price of 12-15$, I've seen the price change a little off and on but it's usually in that range. There's links to it in the description of that video as well for you! If you're asking because you're looking to get started in macro footage as well, let us know when you make your first video! I'd be happy to check it out!
When Baby German Blue Rams are first born. After the eat their egg sack or food sack, what the first thing we should feed them that is small enough? I have Vinegar eel worms and brine shrimp. Should I do that or should I also make Infusorium / Paramecium? What's the first / smallest thing I should feed them?
You're right, what were we thinking!? We didn't even take our own advice from previous videos haha. In all seriousness though, the Chaetomorpha actually helped a lot so it didn't cloud up the water, even the first day it really wasn't bad.
We found a snail but all the brine shrimp died off and the snail disappears into the chaeto for periods of time so it's hard to get footage of with all the hiding spots. We're hoping it does ok but it's hard to tell, we still have the ecosphere sealed but I don't think this one can be called a success. We'll try again though soon.
Terra Tinkering The shrimp died off because off the macro algae It took all the nutrients off the water so no more algae is growing therefore the shrimp died of hunger
We actually did, however it was sort of mixed in with a bulk update of a number of projects because unfortunately it was unsuccessful and the brine shrimp didn't survive. We then did a second attempt where we gathered water locally that was brine, hoping for a bit of natural variation and life but that also didn't succeed, before we even sealed it the hatched brine shrimp died. The odd thing is we actually had a number of surviving daphnia in there from the local water, and I'm certain it did have salt- the daphnia did fairly well, but none of the brine shrimp we purposely aimed to hatch and have in that ecosphere made it through even with circulation and being fed. We're not done though with trying to make a successful brine shrimp ecosphere. We have more ideas and plenty more eggs to work with- but we're just having to continue to modify the plan we have in mind.
Gravel traps them, and kills them. Switch to sand for safety. That macro algae will out compete all the edible micro algae. Chaeto is the most efficient at this. Use a slower growing macro algae if you must.
How small do you think an ecosphere can be? Like a small jar with a diameter of 2.5 inches and a height of 3 inches for example. I really want to make one as a present to my little cousin 😊 if someone could help me out that would be really appreciated
It really depends on the life you have inside it, but you'll probably only be able to keep a few snails or micro life such as cyclops, daphnia, or copepods. Anything larger probably won't make it and I recommend against trying a salt water ecosphere in such a small container. I'm fairly certain it won't survive without aeration to the water as well which raises the difficulty of things. If you put larger things into the ecosphere, when the larger critters die you're also at risk for their bodies releasing enough ammonia to kill off the smaller more hardy critters as well, so I personally would specifically leave them out. It would be really neat though to grab from an area you've visited and just see what you wind up with. If you can do a larger container though it'll probably be much more sustainable. I also highly recommend plants since they produce oxygen and help with the nitrogen cycle, and you'll still want to leave a 1/5 air gap at the top as well. Some simply use algae but algae generally will take over if it gets established enough to use as a food source, so I like using other aquatic plants instead.
@@TerraTinkering I was only really thinking of doing micro organisms and some alge or small underwater grass but the problem is that I live on the beach and the only water and stuff I have access to is the sea and a brackish lagoon
It didn't do so hot and died off, the chaeto probably wasn't a good type of macro algae to go with and it was too large for the brine shrimp to actually eat so just overall a poor choice on our end I think. We're not done with the idea though. We'll give another stab at it a bit later on as well.
Haha we definitely agree, our video going up tomorrow will show you the new projects we're planning and a large number of them are ecospheres. Actually we had a terrarium container but Erika picked it up by the top and opening of the terrarium and it broke and cut her hand, she's doing fine but unfortunately now we don't have that project to show off and she's pretty bummed about it.
Hey! So that is part of why we made this ecosphere only with stuff purchased from stores. Everything from this was either hatched from eggs we purchased, or came in with the plant we got from the aquarium store. This is our first attempt at an ecosphere where we're aiming to eliminate the need to get things locally, granted everything is saltwater in this. I know that I even found tiny living aquatic creatures in some garden soil after soaking it for a while. We're trying to dial in a way that is easier for people that don't have access to lakes and such, but we haven't quite got it down yet.
We don't have any experience with saltwater and this specific species is called a brittle star- for a reason I might add. That being said we found someone locally who has a saltwater tank and if it gets bigger we asked if we could visit and record some more footage of it, and the person was fine with that. If all goes well in a bit we'll reach out to them just to see how it's doing. We're not sure of the precise type of Brittle Star it is, as there is a pretty wide variation, but I am thinking it might be Amphipholis squamata.
They're filter feeders, so we're not concerned about cannibalization, if some of them died and started breaking down then they may be able to eat the remains, but they won't attack each other. We're not sure if they'll be able to eat the plant, we do hope so because we asked around trying to find the most hardy, low light plant that would do well in an ecosphere over time, and this macro algae was what we were recommended for saltwater. While it is algae, we're not sure if it's too large for the brine shrimp to consume- so this is definitely a sort of science experiment to find out. We plan on doing another brine shrimp ecosphere after this one with a bit more aesthetics, this was mostly a proof of concept to see what works.
They eat microorganisms! As long as the algae keeps growing the micro life will keep reproducing and the fairy shrimp should have more than enough food 😁
@Terra Tinkering, Brine Shrimp doesn't eat MAcro Algae. They are filter feeders as you mentioned. This means, they will only really eat Plankton and other micro algae floating in the water. Place it near a sun source and let the Algae bloom and somewhat challenge the chaetomorpha. Otherwise, you will have to clean that ecosphere out. There is a reason Chaeto Reactors exist.
Heya! This jar is a 1.5L Fido jar, this is a link the the exact one amzn.to/2GJ3kZN . We found ours locally at a closeout store, but have seen this brand having both orange and white gaskets. They also have some even larger sizes that have been calling out to us haha. Hope it helps and would love to see any projects you may create with one, hopefully we didn't miss this question if you have asked it before.
A local aquarium keeper with a large saltwater tank came and adopted the lil brittle star. They already had an established tank with coral and everything so they were all set to go!
This isn't freshwater, it's brine, the brittle star though came in off the macroalgae we purchased at the store, and we never put it in the brine water, it stayed in the saltwater we initially got when purchasing the plant and we found someone to rehome it to the same day so we just kept it in a smaller container till the person came and took it to their home.
If the moss doesnn't work, you could try a marine macroalgae species like chaetomorpha. If you have any marine aquarists in the are, someone might give you a handful for free.
I'm slightly unsure of how to respond to this because we actually did use Chaetomorpha specifically in our video and even had the name go up on the screen when we placed it into the ecosphere.
I guess I only saw the first half of the video, lol. Also, the brittle star might be one of the micro brittle star species. They are common hitchhikers, and stay small. On your closeup, I noticed you've got a bit of caulerpa macro algae mixed in with your chaeto ball. It's the fern looking one. Nothing wrong with that, just an FYI.
Yep, in the store they had the Caulerpa in the same tank, and I've been doing research and thought the brittle star might be Amphipholis squamata, which like you said was micro and stays small- however they have the name brittle for a reason and we've never actually owned a saltwater aquarium so felt it would still be unfair to seal it up in an ecosphere.... which is probably for the best, the brine shrimp in it haven't faired well over just this past week, we think the chaeto is using the nutrients algae and micro plankton would need to thrive, leaving the creatures with nothing to eat. On that note I'm really glad we found a friendly saltwater enthusiast to take in our little brittle star friend. Down the road we might be able to get update photos and video on it as well!
Possible, chaeto and caulerpa are aggressive growers given enough light. I could definitely see it stripping the water of nitrates and phosphates in a hurry in a container that small. There's also a really good chance amphipods might have rode in on the algae. Usually they're detrivours, but they might be predatory on something as small as baby brine shrimp.
I didn't know people even ate starfish, but looking it up- it appears some people do. This actually isn't a starfish though, it's a brittle star. I'm going to have to respectfully tell you that you may not eat our critters though.
If you're referring to the temperatures, both things of water were sitting at room temperature for hours beforehand. We also used almost entirely the water we originally had the brine shrimp in, a small portion did come from the store but doing the drip after adding the brine shrimp into the original water may have helped with stress initially. To the best of our knowledge though we haven't had any die off. We'll keep an eye on them, we're hoping there was also some algae in the water we got from the store since we believe the macro algae may be too large to eat.
It shows briefly but we recorded this with an offbrand action cam in timelapse mode, so it essentially takes a picture every few seconds. That's why it happens so quickly, is because it skipped several frames.
+Player8Gaming In hindsight we probably could have haha, but it's sealed so we're just leaving it alone at the moment. The brine shrimp didn't do the best but we believe the chaeto robbed the micro algae and plankton from being able to establish. We'll do another saltwater down the road. We actually did find a snail in the ecosphere but it keeps disappearing into the chaeto so we haven't gotten much footage of it.
