Hi, I’m experimenting with jars while dreaming about a nano aquarium.
Jar 1-4 are 4 days old. 5-7 are 1 day old.
Contents:
1: surface water from a small shallow dank duck pond. Contains 1 lifeform, maybe crustacian swimming. Has small seed sprouts.
2: compost dirt and tap water. no life, very tea coloured growing darker every day.
3: triops hatchery. 2 artemia and 1 daphnia. dissapointed no triops have hatched. no eggs or am I doing it wrong?
4: aquarium sand, rock from the forest, spiderplant, tapwater.
5: organic matter from a lake. contains cyclops, daphnia, insects, beetles, worms, crustaceans(?), leaves and decaying matter, some greenish-plant matter hopefully alive.
6: a plant from a lake, suspect lilypad but it looks like a monstera houseplant to me.
7: tapwater
Questions:
Jar 3 triops hatchery is not hatchibg triops, surely the artemia and daphnea will soon die, should i move these to jar 4? I assume there is more bacteria in jar 3 because of the detrirus, but jar 4 has roots of spiderplant that smell like an aqurium.
Can i cut up the waterlily, divide it? is it really a waterlily?
Jar 5 has a lot of macro life, do i need a planted tank for them to live? (oxygen will run out?) how long can they survive in there? I’m soon to get some aquarium cuttings.
The jars are not sealed.
by SkyfishArt
2 Comments
For a planted nano tank I suggest reading up on the Walstad Method.
Planted tanks don’t necessarily need filters or heaters; it depends on what you keep in them. From personal experience I’d suggest a sponge filter to keep the water moving/help with oxygenation, and definitely a grow LED light.
You have a nice collection there, so let me see if I can answer your questions and give you some feedback.
First off, all the jars without a plant are doomed. A plant is necessary to sustain a jar.
I never had luck with triops nor any other eggs hatching. I had brine shrimp, fairy shrimp and triops and none got ever older than 3 weeks. Daphnia however worked great.
The lily is a bulb plant, which means that only the bulb should be in water. It will eat up nutrients like there’s no tomorrow and will deplete a jar within days. It is not suitable.
You can only divide it if it has more than one bulb. You can’t cut up a bulb.
I have a dozen naturally set up tanks and about 40 jars, all based on r/walstad and r/FatherFish. Go see his YouTube channel, it’s worth it. OMG even after doing this for 40 years, I learned so much. Best of all, he keeps it simple and uncomplicated.
Feel free to join us over at r/bizzariums where you probably will get more feedback.