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Enclosed self-sustaining jar environment

Salty&Onion

Salty&Onion

Fish Aficionado
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I saw couple videos from Michael Langerman who adopts (he calles it like that lol) wild cleaning crew from lakes.
After watching couple of his videos on finding wild daphnia, cyclops, seed shrimp, nematodes and occasionally nymphs and on setting a jar like that, so I decided to do one of my own. I have a bottle after Lucozade and a jar after pickles.

Hopefully today or tommorow I'm gonna go to a park with a river that has strong and weak or possibly no water current which could be great for some organisms. Would I actually find something nice in a river or not? If not, I found couple of nice parks with nice lakes.

Are some tips available for me like finding an excellent environment for some nice organisms and plants or setting up and keeping them?
 
I culture locally collected daphnia as feeders for newt larva. They require green water, which can be made by putting some dead vegetation from an aquarium into a jar, and placing it in strong light. They reproduce relatively quickly, but must be harvested regularly- cultures easily crash from overcrowding.
They will consume almost any kind of aquatic detritus that you can put in with them.
One year, I accidentally cultured some sort of little black crustacean that was living in the duckweed in a turtle tank. They were larger than daphnia. I haven't found any since.
The best place to collect that stuff is shallow, vegetated wetlands. I use two nets to scoop water- a standard aquarium net, and a brine shrimp net, nested together. This helps me keep from getting too much crud.
 
Oak leaves are fine to put in in a jar to make the green water?
So river is not a greatest place to catch them?
What would I find in a river?
 
I tried this but with an empty coffee jar and from a local ornamental pond. It's been on my kitchen windowsill for about three weeks. So far my green bits are still green but no other signs of life. Will be interested to follow your progress.
 
BoningKnife said:
I tried this but with an empty coffee jar and from a local ornamental pond. It's been on my kitchen windowsill for about three weeks. So far my green bits are still green but no other signs of life. Will be interested to follow your progress.
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I'm sure you'll find something next time maybe? :)
I'm hoping that I'll find something nice.
 
Yeah. I think a moving body of water would be better for the next attempt haha. Fingers crossed for you.
 
BoningKnife said:
Yeah. I think a moving body of water would be better for the next attempt haha. Fingers crossed for you.
Click to expand...
Lol thanks :)
Herpin Man said:
Rivers and streams often have scuds, aka Gammarus. I find them under rocks or in vegetation in moving water.
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I think that scuds could also be awesome. What do they eat?
 
Last edited:
Scuds are also detritus feeders- fish food, plants, soft vegetables. I haven't had much luck culturing them, but then, I haven't tried very hard.
 
Ok, an update.. I went yesterday to a park with a river and I did find some seed shrimp, which was a surprise to me, and something daphnia looking like things that move either by crawling at the bottom of the vase or swimming by flapping their wing like things and I found some algae that produces oxygen.. added my bladder snail and gave it some fish flakes yesterday and today.
Seed shrimp are jumping around and the second things are just crawling..

2nd day:

Water is greenish and cloudy

image.jpg


I also got a sample of land moss that I'm gonna be trying to grow underwater, it is already giving couple of oxygen bubbles:

image.jpg
 
That's brilliant!!!
Everytime I see something like this I curse the fact mine doesn't have so much as a mosquito larvae lmfao.
If you haven't seen it already, you might find this interesting.
 
Colin_T said:
don't get too carried away with the food. small creatures only need a small amount. too much food will cause ammonia problems and kill everything in there.
Click to expand...
I'll dechlorinate some water today without using anything and I'll change water there.
 
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