this is an ecosphere it contains a vast array of plants and animal life and with a little luck
it will be totally self-sustaining this is my first time making one so i sought out the help
of someone who makes them all the time lucas is a 17 year old ecology student and has kindly agreed
to assist me in the making of this video this is how we made our self-sustaining ecosphere
first we headed to the park where i knew there was a fresh water stream yeah straight ahead
here we collected some water and substrate from the bottom of the stream
it's important to use water from a stream or a pond rather than tap water
as it contains lots of chemicals that will harm the plants and animals inside the ecosphere
thankfully i'm not the one actually going into the pond today
ready yes okay let's go
i am well and truly prepared for this
the substrate contains lots of microorganisms and bacteria that will be beneficial to the
ecosystem it's important to use water from a non-polluted source
once we collected what we needed i drove us over to our local aquarium and reptile store
where we picked up some plants and a massive thank you to aquatics and reptiles for allowing us to
film in here i love this shop and if you live in worcester you should totally check it out
we got our plants and headed back to my workshop to start making the ecosphere
okay so we've just got back from collecting all the materials that we needed and
this is what we've got a large five-liter glass container with a lid 5 liters of stream water
substrate from the bottom of the stream
aquarium plants and duckweed
and these tupperware containers are full of creatures that luke has collected on his own
assembling the ecosphere is relatively simple first we added a two inch layer
of substrate into the jar once that's in place it's time to add the plants
egeria densa is a common plant that works well in an
ecosphere each cutting is pushed into the soil where it will root in no time at all
i'm not sure of this plant's name but we dotted a few cuttings around the egeria to
add some variety in the planting scheme and finally we added this plant which
i also don't know the name of as you can tell aquatic plants are not my speciality
to minimise the risk of uprooting plants when we add the water
we created a makeshift water disperser which actually works out quite well
though some of the plants did come unplanted lucas simply pushed them back into the soil
we added a few lower lying plants by gluing them to the pieces of stone to
stop them flowing to the top these were then pushed into the substrate where they will root
this is the part that i'm most excited about animals have a huge impact on the function of
the ecosystem they fulfill many different roles in the ecosphere and are essential to the correct
function of the ecosystem snails are arguably the most important type of organism in the ecosphere
we're using bladder snails new zealand mud snails river limpets and wandering snails
snails keep the glass clean by feeding on the biofilm that collects on surfaces
they also break down plants and consume algae amphipods these are some of the more energetic
organisms they feed on a variety of waste plants and even other organisms
they are useful in the breakdown of plant matter allowing it to be recycled
perfect
daphnia are filter feeders and consume waste and algae
they are important for the breakdown of waste materials from the other creatures and plants
each creature is carefully added into
the container where they will hopefully settle and multiply
finally add a little bit of duckweed and here is our finished ecosphere
i think this is a better contender to be called a self-sustaining ecosystem because
i don't really like when terrariums are called that but that's the discussion for another day
i think this is a fantastic project for anybody to work on especially if you enjoy observing life
in a contained ecosystem it wasn't difficult or expensive to make and you could do it even
cheaper by choosing a smaller container and buying less plants i'd like to say a special thank you
to lucas who was the brains behind this video i can safely say that i'll be making more content
on ecospheres in the future thank you very much for watching and i'll see you in the next video