I often have fruit fly problems in my home. I make those little plastic bottle traps with apple cider vinegar to get rid of them. But sometimes they get trapped in there and breed. So my little traps end up becoming ecospheres if I leave them too long.
@@Creaform003 The dish soap breaks the surface tension on the water, so the flies can’t sit on top. They fall in and drown. That’s why they look like they die on contact.
@@diggoran With the low surface tension the liquid flows straight into their spiracles drowning them pretty much instantly. I prefer it because anticholinesterase in fly spray kill pretty slow.
I like how self cleaning the jar is, the glass walls started a mess of algae, fly bodies and the dead coffee leaves, and then was eaten by the springtails and decomposed by other organisms in the jar.
This is the best example of "Life finds a way." I learned something new about fruit flies though. Didn't know the size of them depended on temperature. That's pretty neat. When it looked like the entire thing would die... it sprung to life! Not shocked about the fruit flies though, I think they need rotting fruit to really thrive. "And now they're all dead. And on that positive note..." I love your humor. lol
My takeaway is the bloodleaf plant is stupidly easy to care for if you can just stick it in a jar and let it vibe, so I might try growing one after some research, plus they look really neat
@@Gay_Priest nah, the closed jar is a eco system itself not perfect but near perfect, without the nutrition for the fruit flies the whole thing would prob have gone downhill.
Yeah so it’s interesting how fruit flies and other small insects probably, can just adapt to the temperature of their environment to such a radical degree that they change their size this much. It makes sense, a larger size means a bigger surface area but a proportionally way bigger internal volume of an object. Which is better for keeping heat in. When it’s already hot anyway, they can prioritize on being as small as possible since they aren’t predators
Who said he stopped tending to his plant ? 😢😂🎉 there's a lot of plants in the jungle and if you wanted a big booty latina named mami seata she's in brazil with the cheese check the Brit first before you gaze the star when the toilet shakes jump a fart to zip it up and ship it if there's anymore to sell go at all costs the sea is rising so drink a mop water bucket out of the mcdonalds fountain
the process of adaptation of these plants was incredible. at first I thought the jar would only have dead leaves and fungus. but I was surprised to see how life found a way even stuck in a jar
"life even in a jar" the scale for life has such a huge variety. for microorganisms little bugs are insanely huge then for mammals the same applies again. You could even make an experiment where you simulate the history of earth itself and how the development went from chemical to biological if we had the time and thousands of lifetimes.
You would basically be a god for the little world you govern.... maybe govern is the wrong word the only thing you do is setting the starting perimeters. I imagine this is what immortals or higher beings would do for boredom. Atleast i would if i neither would have a sense for time or a lifespan.
Happy to see you return to uploading. Soon as I saw the notification, I clicked. I hope everything is going well for you. It's great to hear the community was very supportive.
Pretty sure that the "rotifers" are a type of copepod. The copepods you usually see are Cyclops, and they live in large bodies of water, but there are lots of other species of copepods. Some of them live in wet soil. Without competition from the typically-aquatic copepods like Cyclops, the soil copepods probably made their way out of the pot and into the water in the jar.
@@ChiseledDiamond Stentors in general would either be attached or free-swimming. The free-swimming ones would be in the water column and they'd be moving in a very smooth fashion, not jumpy like these and not next to the glass. S. coeruleus in particular would be a blueish color (that's what "coeruleus" means), not white.
While in grade school, I bred fruit flies in jars with air holes poked through the lid. I was so intrigued by the mutations and evolution happening right in front of me. I even looked at them under a microscope to study the dominant and recessive genes. It was a really cool experience
I have missed you, and I hope you are doing well. I always enjoy the way your jars show us that life will find a way. The constant evolution of species within a closed ecosystem reminds me of our World. Life is both fragile and insistent. Your pleasure at the appearance of a new life form in one of your jars is shared by your faithful Jarmy, and your inquisitive mind always makes me think. Thank you.🖤🇨🇦
I'd be curious to see one of these jars with a little sensor package in it, both to see the readings of different atmospheric conditions and to see if the sensors survive
Patience is a virtue, one I do not possess so thank you once again, for doing these “learning jars” that I could never. I hope you are growing like those plants after a little down time 🤗🤗✌️
Something for future projects, try adding a mini magnetic aquarium cleaner inside the ecosystem. You could wipe the algae from a small portion of the glass, giving a clean "window" to view to the plants inside.
Idea: at the end you got me thinking. What if you took a pot and filled it with native plants and animals and surrounded the pot with pond water, creating and “island ecosphere” with both a terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem in a jar. This idea seems so cool I may have to try it for myself!
Man your videos and narration are very calming and help me relax at night. As a biology student, I also appreciate all the little bits of information you add to these videos. I admire you, as I too wish I had the patience to develop this hobby. Greetings from Costa Rica :)
Fascinating! Interesting that the one organism you added is no longer viable but so many more came from the presence of the soil. Glad to see you posting again!
I have dabbled in breeding fruit flies, I wasnt expecting them to last too many generations as mites become a serious issue after a few cycles you end up with too many mites per fruit fly as the just abandon dead ones and move over to new ones. You cant really get rid of them either as they are almost always paired with them
That's so awesome! I have a nearly 4 year old sealed terrarium jar that I'm going to do an update on in September. Life in jars is super cool and inspiring :D
Always come back to this channel randomly to binge. Love the content. You're doing 5 year old me's dream as a youtube channel lol. I used to put a bunch of bugs and grass and stuff in tins and see if they eat it, but they usually just died. Great stuff, man
Thank you for producing your content, it’s always full of surprises and great information! I’ve started a pond and a river ecosphere after watching you and a few other similar channels. I’m excited to see how they change over time.
Thank you for this video! I bought a jar made for Terrariums and I put a layer of rocks at the bottom, then dirt, and then I put 2 baby mushrooms and moss and watered it. It looked amazing and It was all inspired by you!
thanks for the update!!!! i love watching those little rotifers wiggle around. your videos are always so relaxing and so informative, thanks for doing what you do 🥰
We had a small water leak last summer that we weren't aware of. Because of it, we also ended up fighting a mold bloom. In addition to the leak & the mold, we had a huge fruit fly infestations - in the basement. (?!) Which is how I learned fruit flies love mold. So, i wonder, if you added some mold to the jar set-up, would the mold grow? And if it grows, would it support a fruit fly population? Or would the mold kill the plants? -- The 'butterfly effect' is certainly a factor in a small, closed habitat! Glad you are back & hope things are going well. And as always, thank you.
Those probably weren't fruit flies, but fungus gnats. Fungus gnats feed on mold, mildew, and other types of fungi. I have had quite a few of them feed on mildew from decaying soil or leaves from houseplants. Fruit flies need something sugary to eat, like fruit or soda.
@@Hope_IsNotMyName Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately, these were probably fruit flies. I started looking into what fruit flies eat, other than stinky carbs. And different sources mentioned fruit flies like mold. - It still sounded suspicious, so I trapped some & took them to a friend who is an Entomologist. He said they were definitely fruit flies, & yep, they like mold. Now I wonder if your flies & my flies are the same species, but different subspecies. - All I know is I ended up learning more about fruit flies than I ever wanted to know. (And how difficult it is to completely get rid of mold!) Thanks, again. - M.A.D.
Thanks to you i made a jar too about a year ago. Its a freshwater ecosystem from a pond in groningen. I caught a water scorpion, but it died after maybe a month. The plants survived for about 4 months, then the algae, detritus worms and snails took over. For a long time no plants were growing until the start of this summer. The algae reduced and made space for these pine-like plants. It produces a lot oxigen judging by the bubbles coming from the algae and plants. It's a very interesting hobby.
For the closed ecosystems you could use some rare earth magnets and a piece of rubber or felt to make a scrubber that can be used magnetically to clear the viewing surface with out opening the jar.
I just saw a video of yours on my recommended and decided after watching it I’d check out a couple others, I gotta say I like it! I’ve always thought of how I could do something like this myself and you’ve shown what it’s like, it looks really interesting! Thanks for the video.
maybe adding a magnetic window cleaner, like in fish tanks, to the jars will help create a small window for filming for each update recording session! This will allow for better viewing but keeps the jar contained! ps Glad you’re back and I hope you’re feeling happier man :) Thanks for putting in the effort for us.
was thinking about this same exact thing before i scrolled down to see the comments. I believe it would become covered in algae or slime by the time you would need to use it on the glass's walls, and probably just spread more haze around than clean anything. It might not and work fine though.
Your voice is so soothing! This was informative, interesting and relaxing, a really nice change of pace from some yt videos I get recommended. Thanks algorithm for sending me here! 🙂
These are neat. You should look into making a squeegee to wipe off the condensation and debris from the inside of the jar for clearer shots of the center. You could use a magnet to manipulate it from the outside.
Answering (or at least adding to) your springtail caffeine question: Sprintails in my experience seem to thrive off of caffeine. I put some coffee grounds on my bio tank (i keep roaches and sprintails, at some point will add isopods and earthworms, and i use them for composting plant scraps) and they not only swarmed them but seemed to blow up in numbers soon after.
You should source enough dirt or water, for 5 or 6 closed ecospheres. Set the ecospheres up and then run an experiment comparing any potential differences. I think that could make a good series for this channel
I've done fruitfly cultures a few times and every time they die like that in the end and I think the reason is that the food we put for them starts to give out some gases after it rots and the air no longer remains breathable for them. One time I had put mashed potatoes and vinegar mixture as the media for them and long after that culture died I opened the bottle and a little air explosion happened like PAT! Even though there were little holes I had punctured into the bottle for air for the flies, the surface tension couldn't let the gases escape from the tiny holes.
i think its so cool that the plant that was doing kinda bad before the other is the one thats going absolutely bananas a year later. i also love when springtails seemingly just appear out of nowhere in closed ecosystems lol great vid!!
I found your channel a day or so ago and now there’s new video, yay! Thank you for everything you do, these videos are amazing to watch and so informative!
About a year and half ago, during lockdown, ive decided to make a plant terrarium. Ive used moss, lichens, soil, little branches and rocks from our garden, an ivy branch and some plant leaf cuts my mom gave me. Also planted in an old rusty key nobody needed anymore for decoration. Later I've noticed some fruit flies inside and they were dying off slowly. The ivy branch died as well and some leaves of the unknown plant from my mom died off as well. However, i was too lazy to empty this dying terrarium qnd left it on my table to this day. After watching this video, I was reminded if its existence and my god, the unknown plant has new, healthy green leaves and even tho, i dont see any animal life in there, there clearly must be some in the soil!
Life is so complex and the transfer of energy is so amazing that a tiny leaf can continuously power the life's of many advance micro organisms! How beautiful life is!
We had drosophila to study at school. I loved mine then and still do. House flies? I have my resident spiders to deal with those [and filter some dust from the air], but fruit flies have a special place in my heart. "But they're all dead" he said nonchalantly, haha. Thanks for this video!
its so cool how the algae turned the gross brown sludge water into a much clearer, lush looking fluid! its kind of amazing to see how nature can clean itself up, if allowed the time to do so uninterrupted
So glad to see you are back uploading your amazing content as always. Your videos never seem to not put a smile on my face. Keep up the amazing work I hope you are doing well too
Hey!! Your idea fascinanted me so i made my first jar aquarium, i took some water from fountains that arent very clean, some floor dirt and sand from the fountains... Guess what i found today! (I started It yesterday) It seems there are some worms, or aquatic worms floating and moving around the surface of the water,but before the worms i saw interesting things; I stared my jar for some minutes, and Guess what i Saw too! Like very very small White dots swimming around the water and theyre quite fast, i doubt they are cilliates but maybe, anyone wants to Tell me some tips or what animals are they if u want (also i just Saw that the White dots do like a Wiggle movement to swim, moderate speed tho
