make your own BioSphere or EcoSphere

make your own

Homemade ecosphere

EcoSphere Beta grew out of a desire to correct the shortcomings of other ecospheres I studied and a desire to fix things I didn't like about EcoSphere Alpha. The greatest difficulties I found with Alpha had to do with viewing and illumination. Viewing Alpha was a problem because of the curved & textured surface of the container and because proper lighting often required a handheld flashlight to see specimens correctly for study or filming. Lighting Alpha required positioning a desk lamp "just so" or risking short periods of direct sunlight (a real danger of overheating exists if you forget about your culture in the sun). This sort of lighting also necessitated frequent movements of the container which tended to disturb the mulm and sometimes sloshed everything around more that one would want it to. Read below how Beta will improve these situations and more.

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Container
Beta's container will be a standard 5 gallon aquarium. The top will be a fitted piece of 1/8" window glass, sealed with eco-friendly caulk after the culture is introduced. Inadvertently, this design choice introduces a serious flaw into EcoSphere Beta, specifically that it's not a "sphere" at all.

Illumination
Lighting for Beta will come from a stock aquarium light bar attached to a dimmer unit and timer for maximum control.

Circulator
The culture will benefit from some degree of water movement. I am currently designing a system that will run a small impeller magnetically via a drive unit outside the tank. Details to follow.

Environment
The culture will inhabit a 4 gallon body of water. Beta will hold a full gallon of atmospheric gasses when sealed. The substrate will be graded from about 3 inches at the rear to almost none at the front. All materials for the environment as well as the population will be collected at the same local site: Lehman Park, Potsdam, NY.

Observation Plans are in the works to include a homebrew webcam microscope in Beta. For lack of a catchier name, I call it a Biocam. Testing on the Biocam is proceeding, and the Biocam page is being put together. ~~Don't expect a picture of a microscopic world at this point, though.~~ Testing has begun. Check out the test pic on the Biocam Page.

Population While no high degree of exactness can be achieved using dredging as the primary specimen collection method, it is hoped that the culture will contain at least the following: Assorted microscopic flora and fauna, hydra, crustaceans, aquatic insects, assorted tube worms, snails, daphnia, et cetera. A conscious effort will be made to introduce at least 3 varieties of leafy plants. Plans do not include the inclusion of vertebrates at this time.