A Year Ago I Put Saltwater in a Jar, This Happened | Natural saltwater ecosphere 1 year update

[Music] [Applause] [Music] a month ago the huge natural saltwater ecosphere turned one year old which means it is time for a one-year update this closed ecosystem has quite a history so let's take a look it all started a year ago when I went to the beach and collected seawater and seaweed and algae and send in jerry cans then i put everything together in a large glass jar and then i closed it with an airtight lid it turned out i had accidentally caught a starfish and that was pretty cool but by the next day it had disappeared and there's anybody who has ever owned an aquarium knows that's bad news i also accidentally caught a small crab and he seemed to be doing well but strangely enough he also disappeared really quickly I actually caught another crab a crab in its larval state this grab was really really small but it already had the distinct crab features like claws also in this ecosphere were a worm possibly sea slug but not likely a different jiggly worm and the type of saltwater Gamera shrimp [Music] after a month the tiny crab had turned into a big crab and there was suddenly seeing a lot of copper parts it also turned out that there was a vibrant and big population of a lot of different species on the glass it contains crustaceans of various types and sizes as well as worms and other invertebrates the glossolalia famous la Villa a type of macro algae was doing really well and growing not very surprisingly the sea lettuce started to rot but the algae ball was doing well after two months the crab had grown even more and was looking really healthy and it seemed to become more active at this point I was really impressed that it was still alive it might sound harsh that the crab was an accident I did not intend for him to be in here if there was a way to safely transport him back to the ocean I would have done that well here he was and he was doing well [Music] [Music] it was also around the two-month mark that new sea lettuce and other microalgae started to grow on the glass of the jar something I had never thought would or even could happen that was really exciting nothing much had changed when it comes to the algae in a month except that the seaweed with air pockets started to decompose I was also amazed by how well the class Eli he frames Lofland was doing this was also the first time I spotted nematodes and the only glass community had grown and incorporated what looks like Paramecium copper paws [Music] but here's the biggest change in two months out of the depths of the earth of the jar Espeon at worm had appeared a type of polychaete worm with two long tentacles coming out of his head which it uses to transport food to its mouth and to build a tube out of scent to act as shelter I can tell you it's really freaky to certainly see tentacle sticking out of the scent in your jar at home but also really cool after four and a half months the crab was still doing really well it hadn't changed much in size but somehow seemed more mature in its behavior [Music] there was more algae growing on the glass [Music] and the number of nematodes had grown but then disaster strikes after five months the crap had died it happened when I was away so I didn't see how or why it happened but I know that looking back at all this footage I miss the little guy roaming around on my windowsill it was up to the ever growing army of Paramecium plankton bacteria and all other small life to process and get rid of his dead body it was uncertain if this closed ecosystem would be able to survive this blow this inevitable ammonia spike only time would tell so this is what the ecosphere looked like from the beginning after a month after two months after four months after five months and now after a year the only thing that has been really consistent is its neighbour the string ecosphere it would have been really nice if I had some footage from a month ago because the ecosphere looked really green and healthy and nice unfortunately I don't because since then we've been hit by a heatwave and most of the algae has died which is why it's looking so white locally the animal life has survived and has been able to recover for the most part [Music] if we look at the little carpet of surviving algae at the bottom we can still see a wide variety of crustaceans worms Paramecium and a lot of other small animal life I know I've said it a few times before now but I am absolutely mind blown that life is able to survive in one of these closed ecosystems order looking at is a bunch of different species and a lot of individuals living in their own closed ecosystem they have no interaction with earth's ecosystem at all they only receive energy they have lived in this environment for over a year they survive the crab diet that's the equivalent of an animal the size of Europe dying on earth for us just recently they survived a massive heat wave and they survived most of the producers in the ecosystem dying because of that heat wave all in all I guess it's only fair to say life finds a way [Music] [Music] this is one of the few pieces of macro algae on the glass that has survived of course we shouldn't forget the under glass community [Music] here's something new that green stuff might look like algae but it's actually a colony of cyanobacteria while I was investigating this I suddenly saw a piece of dead algae moving in the background weird then I saw that there were two tentacles sticking out of them sand moving grains of sand around and my mind went racing I looked at it closer and it was definitely it's beyond warm the big question is how did it get here the previous one disappeared nine months ago headed latex or maybe just went dormant for a long period whatever the reason the fact of the matter is that there's a speii on earth warm in this eco sphere again and I'm quite happy about it [Music] I also noticed that a little piece of the castle area from Salalah is still alive almost all the order macroalgae has died during the heat wave but this piece is still hanging in there it's not looking really healthy though so I hope it will be able to recover here you can see the warmth from another angle yay there you can see some dead white algae with a few animals in it I thought this was really cool filming it but honestly I don't know what to say here's another angle on this violent worm or is it no this is actually another speed on it worm that's cool and all but it makes the question of where they come from even bigger they both live on top of the hill they have built themselves I talked about how amazed I was that there's animal life in here earlier but I'm even mind-blown er that there are larger animals like this living in the ecosphere [Music] this is a little spy on a tail this is a speii on his hill I just showed you and this little hill in front of the air bubble is this beyond a tail I showed you before that there are three spirited worms living in a triangle in the center of the ecosphere whoa I believe this is the place where the crab died but I can't be sure because the body has disappeared the dead crab has been processed and the shell seems to have dissolved which is way sooner than I expected but the razor clam shell is nowhere to be seen either unfortunately almost all of the new pieces of macro algae on the glass have died so after a year the natural saltwater ecosystem is still alive and kicking great if you want to see other projects and don't want to miss other updates and you haven't already well you're going to have to subscribe thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Life in Jars?

Views: 7,247,023

Rating: 4.8802581 out of 5

Keywords: ecosphere, saltwater ecosphere, seawater ecosphere, ocean ecosphere, huge ecosphere, big ecosphere, giant ecosphere, ecosphere with animals, ecosphere with shrimp, closed ecosystem, saltwater ecosystem, seawater ecosystem, ecosphere diy, homemade ecosphere, marine ecosphere, north sea ecosphere, saltwater biosphere, ecosphere update, ecosphere 1 year, ecosphere megaupdate, life in jars, life in a jar, successful ecosphere, natural ecosphere, ecosphere with crabs

Id: 3OG5jyRGhLg

Length: 12min 33sec (753 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 18 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Ddodds]

Pretty cool. The story of that crab bro will live on.

[u/anyvvays]

A different, jiggly worm.

Some say jiggly, I say fabulous.

[u/SmackEh]

Mind blown-er! That made my day!

[u/purpleelpehant]

Super cool