So tbh I’m certain it’s not a diving bell spider as I’ve seen them in ecospheres before and this just isn’t acting like one, however what could this be ? For context I topped up the water with 300ml with a jug just 5mins before the video so maybe idk a bubble from that caught an Aphid and just somehow managed to trap it underwater caught on some dying Azola!!!???
Fui a um rio e fiz uma ecosfera. Veio um camarão pequenininho junto.... ele não vai ter boas condições de vida aqui, certo? Acho que terei que voltar ao rio para devolver
Typically, when setting up a new jar or tank, you will encounter biofilm within the first week or 2. That's the white flaky stuff swimming on the water surface. Then it turns brown and most newbies start to panic.
What's most important to know is that all of this is alive and very useful!
The brown phase usually peaks around weeks 2 to 4 of a new jar. It might look ugly, but it is actually producing oxygen and feeding your micro-fauna. Keep your jar in indirect sunlight, don't open it, and let nature do its thing!
Whenever a fresh surface (like glass, a rock, or new aquarium decorations) is placed in water, free-floating bacteria and organic molecules land on it almost immediately. They secrete a sticky, slimy matrix of sugars and proteins. This is the initial biofilm.
Freshwater diatoms happen when sunlight, dissolved silica, and nutrients like nitrates and phosphates come together in rivers, lakes, streams, or new jars and tanks.
Diatoms are a special type of single-celled algae. But unlike regular green algae, diatoms build a microscopic, hard shell around themselves made out of silica. They are naturally present in almost all bodies of water.
Once anchored, the diatoms begin using sunlight to photosynthesize, multiplying rapidly across that exact patch of slime.
Using sunlight and chlorophyll, they convert carbon dioxide into energy and oxygen just like plants do. When nutrient levels, especially nitrates, phosphates, or silica, rise or when light conditions become ideal (such as in spring or in a newly filled aquarium), they divide rapidly.
Here are the typical critters found in jars that munch on diatoms, and those that don't:
• Snails (Bladder, Ramshorn, Pond): The absolute kings of diatom control. They use a sand-paper-like tongue called a radula to literally scrape diatoms off the glass, shell and all.
• Ostracods (Seed Shrimp): Absolute powerhouses for diatoms. They continuously scurry along surfaces, using their appendages to scoop up and munch down diatoms and biofilm.
• Scuds (Amphipods): These are voracious shredders and scavengers. While they love decaying leaves, they will happily graze down the diatom/biofilm carpet covering substrate and plants.
• Mayfly Nymphs & some Caddisfly Larvae: If users catch these nymphs in their wild ecospheres, they are major "scrapers." Their mouthparts are built to shear diatoms cleanly off river rocks.
• Rotifers & Ciliates (like Stentors): The microscopic clean-up crew. Many benthic (surface-dwelling) rotifers and ciliates use hair-like cilia to create vortexes, sucking free-floating or loosely attached diatoms directly into their gullets.
• Copepods: Cyclopoid copepods mostly hunt smaller animals, but Harpacticoid copepods (the ones that crawl on the glass rather than jerky-swimming in open water) will graze on diatoms.
• Tubifex & Detritus Worms: These guys eat mud, decaying organic waste, and bacteria. Because diatoms die and sink into the substrate sludge, worms digest them along with the mud.
• Water Boatmen (Corixidae): Unlike most aquatic bugs, water boatmen are mostly vegetarian! They use their straw-like mouthparts to inject saliva into algae and suck out the juices, though they prefer soft green filamentous algae over hard diatoms.
• Chironomid Larva (Bloodworms): These midge fly larvae spin little tubes in the mud and use silk nets to trap organic debris, which inevitably includes a lot of tasty diatoms.
• Hydra: Pure carnivores with stinging tentacles. They only eat moving meat (like daphnia or copepods).
• Planarians: Predatory or scavengers of dead animal matter. They hunt small invertebrates by wrapping around them and secreting slime.
• Rhabdocoela flatworm: While they do occasionally eat tiny protozoans if they happen to run into them, their primary diet consists of bacteria, organic debris, and yes—diatoms! Because they have a simple, vacuum-like mouth on their underside, they glide right over surfaces and suck up microscopic particles.
• Asian Leeches & Snail Leeches: Snail leeches hunt snails; Asian leeches hunt worms. Zero interest in salad.
• Diving Beetles & Damselfly/Dragonfly Nymphs: Voracious apex predators of the jar. They want live, moving prey.
• Water Mites: Most water mites are parasitic on insects or hunt tiny micro-crustaceans.
Here is a jar I emptied after a couple of months, because the water wouldn't clear. Turns out it wasn't the water, it was the glass tinted by diatoms. I ran this jar 3 times through the dishwasher before I filmed this.
The reason why it didn't come off is that diatoms build their shells out of silica, which is the exact same material the glass jar is made of. The dishwasher soap cannot break down or dissolve silica without ruining the glass itself. The underlying biofilm creates a waterproof, chemical-resistant shield. The dishwasher detergent simply slides right over it without penetrating the core layer.
Video credit: Micronaut (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS-EI\_3gvjw)
40x magnification. From my fish tank.
silly me neglected to consider that hair algae grows like crazy in natural light after i got rid of my ugly curtains. i tried doing blackouts to get rid of it, but it did not work. last night i sadly resorted to manual removal. I taped up construction paper over the sides getting all the light. i have no time today to do something more appealing with it but i do plan on making it prettier in the next couple days lol. This is the second bloom i've had in this ecosphere specifically. hopefully permanently blacking out the sides is the solution, the last thing i wanna do is carry it upstairs and that's the only other place i could put it :/
Im not sure if i had gotten around to posting my first day bucket built or I forgot...i have a feeling I forgot to post a before vid, and I can't seem to find it in my gallery.
Anyway here is my 5 gal bucket pond project that did way way better than i had ever expected.
In here has the biggest copepods I've ever seen and there are so many more other creatures as well. It's teeming with life.
I had used 2 small jars of water from a local pond to get things started along with some of the sediments. Really wasn't much material about 22oz. The rest of water filled up was rain water.
It's outside in my front yard and recieves about 6hrs of direct sunlight and then about 2hrs of partial sunlight in the evening time. I've always been trying to grow water sprite in my inside aquarium but was never successful. I have never seen them grown so huge as they did in this bucket. And it taught me of the power of sunlight.
After observing that I do put my other jars in the evening sun for about 1 hr and I've noticed a huge bloom in the copepod populations.
I have really been around for the past 3 weeks to enjoy the view and activity happening inside the ecosystem but today I took a peak and noticed how crazy the little piece of guppy grass got along with the other floating plants. So I'll need to do some maintenance as soon as I can.
I don't want to make this post too long so I'll stop there but anyone interested in info I'll gladly try to provide.