Finally went to a local pond (England) and sourced water, sediment, rocks, hornwort and elodea, plus some empty snail shells for decor. Tried a few different style jars and have already been finding so much life in them! One jar has at least 2 baby ramshorns and I found a baby bladder snail in another. Can’t wait to see what shows up! Some have bare bottom, some have sediment and rocks, and some just rocks. I can see tons of tiny swimmers, I was able to make out some copepods and I think there’s probably daphnia. Found some detritus worms in my “ugly” dirty one (last photo). Excited to see how they evolve and what setups succeed!

I welcome any tips for success! Love seeing your jars

My first pond bowl! The water and rocks and empty snail shells plus hornwort and elodea are all ethically sourced from local pond in New England, US. Added 2 anubias I had unused and one of my marimo and a piece of cholla wood and some lava rocks. In addition to the naturally occurring microfauna, I added 10 breeding pairs of scuds. Can’t wait to see what else shows up in here!

So I posted up a picture before of my open topped, and had a request for construction pictures. Well I wanted to change a couple of things and pull out the floating pearlite, so I took some pictures for you guys.

After utility work I changed to pumps flow.

Then positioned the wood and started glueing rocks together. This process is horrible with red lava rock.

Then I moved the roots of my plants a little higher out of the water. I wanted to make sure I didn’t get root rot but allowed hydroponic growth, maybe. I am trusting the person that sold me the plants to be correct that they are a marginal that can survive wet conditions.

After that I packed the moss into the rocks and crevices.

In a few weeks I will introduce the shrimp but scuds are in there with a snail currently. I added some springtails to help keep mold under control.

For all you PC people I took a picture from my daughter’s side of the deck to show how far my computer is from the tank and Jar.

And for any Battletech fans you will see some mechs in the pictures.

Just set up this jar yesterday. It’s my first try at an open top so I went with some mangrove like plants to grow out the top. I have a working waterfall across a piece of driftwood. All the stones are lava rock with some polished river stones.

Plan on adding some shrimp later but need to do a water change as some perilite got into the water column. Does have scuds and snails from my main fish tanks refuge.

I will post up more pictures later.

I bought these from ebay and apparently the seller had a tank with much higher abrasion/acidity because the new growth is thicker and shinier and very visible.

I kind of knew that they grew in a spiral but it's fun to see it so clearly.

I liked the old arrangement but I have seen multiple clutches of ramshorn eggs which means there are at least 3 times that I have not seen. This means I will most definitely have to do a culling within the coming month or so and the jar was not set up for that. This let's me keep track of the population better and clean the gravel. Less plants will hopefully keep the snails from exploding further since there will be a more controlled food source in the jar.

Kinda just put some stuff from a local river in a jar and stuff has been growing (I am extremely new to this). There seem to be some snails in there! Am I gonna kill these guys? What should the water/air ratio be? How can I make this better than what it is? Should I even touch it? Pls help me

I have this empty Ole smokey jar that has a light blue coloring to it. Would something like this be okay for making a terrarium?

I pulled the trigger on getting six blue ramhorns and I don't understand why they are considered pests ,they are lovely. I quickly found out that they really don't like the sharp gravel at the bottom so I had to lay down some rocks and I added an airpump in the back to make sure the water circulates properly. The guy in the 3rd image is called floaty. I thought he was dead but I've seen him crawl on the glass and nibble at the frogbits so I think he is fine. I'm starting to worry that he might be unable to empty his floating bladder but we will see.

Sorry couldn't zoom more. My macro camera is not good enough. I suspect moth eggs, as theres little flakes around the eggs tgat resemble moth scales. Eggs are extremely hydrophobic. Not joined, just happen to be mostly laid together. Likely by a flying insect that walks on water surface. Thers a couple of single eggs too. Laid on a freshly set up jar that should have good o2 & healthy nutrient rich biology, but its a week old so lots of biofilm etc getting established now. Some Plants just starting to melt a bit.

I wanted to create a jar with some floating water plants and a friend gifted me some of his excess spirodela…
I was just about to go to the shops a saw this little fella swimming around. I think it’s a fish. How can I keep it alive? What kind of jar should I build now. Any help
appreciated thx

Hey folks. I have made open-top, aquatic jarrariums before, but I want to try a totally sealed terrestrial setup. I have a decent-sized pickle jar (2 litres). I want to focus on plants and invertebrates with very ancient lineages that still resemble their ancestors from hundreds of millions of years ago. So I was thinking of using moss as the only plant life, but then I thought that a single small fern could be a nice centerpiece. My question is, would a fern stay relatively small in a sealed jar, or would it quickly outgrow it? I keep houseplants, but I don't have experience growing ferns. Do they limit their size based on what they're growing in, or just steadily grow no matter the container? My mom has some Japanese painted ferns in her yard, and while those can get big, some of them have stayed small for a while, so I thought I might try transplanting a small one from her yard into the jar. If that species is a bad pick, what would be better? Any advice about growing a fern in a 2-litre jar would be appreciated!

I want a jarrarium for my apartment, but don’t know where to start, any tips, tricks, links for products? I’d like it to be a closed ecosystem as I have cats. Thanks in advance

I collected some silt and some kind of grass that was in the river. I’ve had it going for a few weeks and have some little slugs and these little white things. Pretty neat.