Ecospheres?

[The-Wolf]

what are your opinions of ecospheres?
http/www.lazyboneuk.com/store/pro90.html

 

[Navarre]

I have never seen one of these but i have heard of a coupleof people who have tried them. Most say they didnt work or were simply boring to watch.
I feel both remarks may be a bit hasty and you need to really be aware of why you would buy one.

Balance is the essential work here. SUnlight is extremly powerful and even in our cooler part of the world, sunlight can cause massive algae blooms. So my main concern is that the algae would form on the glass which would defeat the reason for having it as you cannot get inside the system to clean it. Algae would be kept fairly low as nutrient levels will be low also but this still wont control how or where it will grow.

Another concern is the water chemistry. Salt water is extremly complex and these trace eliments assit in many creatures development during their lives. Shrimps cannot grow like fish or other soft bodied creatures so they need to make new shells. This causes 2 things to spring to mind.

1. Where will all the waste shell go? Shrimps might eat the shell to absorb nutrients but this is not always assured. if it is not eaten then it will rot and cause nutrients spikes and thus algae

2. To make new shells constantly means that the shrimps will need to remove trace eliments from the water. This means at some point th eliments will be exhausted and the shrimps will either die during a moult or their shells will be very weak.

This is just a quick point of view that as a hobbiest i would say are problem areas. However i could be wrong and there might well be a good reason why my concerns are not warranted on this product.

 

[tomstanks]

"The Ecospheres come in 4 sizes, the larger they are the longer they are likely to last due to the amount of shrimp."


This is a quote form the link you gave. They will last a while, and then it will go down hill and they will die in a great big ugly mess. I fear that they are not worth the $$$.