Paludarium Ecosphere WITH FISH

so I just got this bag of charcoal here and I'll explain why later but right now I'm at this beautiful man-made lake because it's time to do a little bit of a science experiment all right I got what I came here for so let's move on okay so what am I even doing here so today I want to try my hand at creating a pallid area a pallid areum is very similar to an aquarium but unlike in an aquarium where it is completely aquatic value Darian combines both land and water and so there's potential to have both aquatic animals and terrestrial animals living in a pallid area but the one I'm making has a little bit of a twist after I'm done creating it I'm going to completely seal off this entire container why because I want to try to see if I can create a completely self-sustained ecosystem where all of the plants and algae provide all the oxygen and food for the creatures living inside and the creatures living inside their waste produces all the nutrients for the plants and the algae it would be a completely self-sustaining ecosystem which I don't have to interfere with once I seal the container so you were probably wondering what I was planning to do with the charcoal that I bought this earlier in the video this is going to become an important ingredient in my pallid areum but first I need to break up these chunks into much smaller pieces okay so now that I've crushed up the charcoal into smaller pieces I'm gonna take this charcoal and I'm gonna put it in my pallid areum and it's going to be the base layer why am I doing this charcoal if you look at it under a microscope has tons of little tiny crevices and holes in it and so a piece of charcoal has a lot of surface area basically it's good at filtering water and since the pallid areum is going to be completely sealed off I need something in there that will be able to filter out all of the toxins and whatever harmful things might be in the water once I close the jar okay so now that I've got my bottom layer of charcoal I am going to cover it with another layer with some dirt that I found in my garden and because the the soil in my garden has a very high clay content it should be very easy to mold it into the kind of shape that I want okay so as you can see I created almost what looks like a mountain in the middle of the pallid area and the reason why I'm doing that is because I want this to become the base for kind of like an island that I'm going to make in the middle and then there's going to be a moat of water around around the perimeter next what I'm going to do is I'm gonna take some of this Moss that I found near my house and then I'm gonna use that to create the canoe a little bit of landscaping in here all right so that's what it looks like now and so now I'm gonna take some of the plants that I've found in the in the lake that I took the materials from and I'm gonna try to plant it in here as well as put a little bit of this mud that I found in there as well and finally I'll just put in a few of final touches all right well it looks a little bit messy right now but I assure you that this is going to become very interesting looking in just a little bit and finally all that's left to do is put a little bit of the lake water in here and then we'll see what happens and so now we have our moat of water in our little island if you look down here you've got many many layers of different things going on and so all that's left to do is seal it up all right and so now we're just gonna leave this here in the Sun and we're gonna wait for this water here to settle down I mean right now it looks a little messy but once the water starts to settle down that we're almost guaranteed to see some really interesting stuff emerge oh nice the water hasn't even cleared up yet and we have already got a little bladder snail sweet all right well 24 hours later and the water still hasn't really cleared up that much but I mean you can see that there's a snail right there and I haven't really seen too many other living organisms so far but I do remember seeing some really tiny like little water fleas and maybe some crustaceans swimming around earlier I'm not really seeing them right now but I'm sure that they're still there also another thing to note is that our water level seems to have dropped rather significantly and that's probably just because the soil and the dirt is starting to absorb some of the moisture so I think I'm going to add a little bit more water in here [Music] so the waters gotten a little cloudy again but that's okay we'll just let it settle down once more and we'll see what happens well this was just some water that was left over from when I made this I think I'm just gonna add all of this water into here since it all came from the same source of water anyways unfortunately it also means that this is becoming less and less of a pallet pallette areum and more of just an aquarium but we still have a little bit of dry land sticking out on top so I think we're gonna leave it like this from now and see what happens all right well it's the next day let's see if we can find anything in here yeah here we go you see that fish we have a fish in here but yeah all of you who are saying that I should make a ecosphere what fishing well here you go where'd you go there you order look at it I don't know what it is I'm guessing it might be like a little guppy or a minnow that little fish actually came from the leftover water that I ended up putting in here I was I was just gonna throw that water out good thing I didn't I don't know if that fish even has a chance at surviving in here though and won't be able to reproduce because I think is the only one in there but I think that's pretty interesting well it's been two or three days since we put that fish in here and it looks like it's still alive just swimming along still alive somehow one thing that is concerning me a little bit is the fact that other than the fish and like a snail I'm not really seeing too many other signs of life in here I mean when it comes to ecosphere is you've got to be patient with them sometimes it takes a while for creatures to emerge but I'm kind of shocked by how few oh well there's something that's a worm I mean yeah I mean worms are fairly common but I'm also looking for little crustaceans like cocoapods that was that one tree ops that I put in here and I can't find it anymore it's possible that the little fish ate it I'm looking for like also any shrimps maybe like fairy shrimps and things like that I'm looking for those two because those are usually indicators of a of a healthy ecosystem Oh what is this hold on okay never mind I think I think is just a vibration from me talking and it's shaking the table like but yeah I did see something that looked like it was swimming around on this side we have not a whole lot and we've got some worms oh there's our snail I wonder if that's the only snail we have I think it is oh there is something things are looking pretty barren right now maybe I'll throw in some very shrimps a little bit later if I don't see anything develop I mean it looks really cool just to look fish again it looks really cool just to look at it but there's not much going on I guess we could talk about the moss it looks it looks green and healthy I had no idea Moss could handle this much moisture you seem to be doing just fine with it so people have been saying that this fish here is a mosquito fish and as the name suggests these fish feed on mosquito larvae though he pretty much any kind of bug or shrimp or crustacean I'm not sure if they live on algae or not but obviously it's finding something to eat in here because it's been alive not only for the entire time that it's been in this particular eco sphere and also because it was sitting in a forgotten jug of water for almost a week before I ever even knew that it existed so it must be eating it must be living off of something I just don't know what exactly all right well today is December 4th which means it's been five days since I last sealed this ecosphere the fish is still alive I just saw it a minute ago but it's in hiding right now but it doesn't seem like anything new has arisen which is a little surprising but what can you do either way it's not that big of a deal but I'm gonna open up the ecosphere one more time and then I'm going to put in some red tail fairy shrimps I'm not really doing it because I want to see more things living in here it's more because the fish inside will probably appreciate it most likely that little fish will eat the shrimp and it'll be a good source of protein for it hey fishy you're gonna get a little treat if the shrimp do manage to survive you know that's an extra bonus and so I think this is going to become the final time that I open this ecosphere and then once I put the shrimp in I'm gonna seal it up and that's it that's we're not gonna mess with it anymore after that and we're only going to put a little bit of shrimp in there there's so many eggs here I don't want to overpopulate the thing yeah I think that'll do okay that's it no more messing around with it well it's two days later and I'm trying to see if we have any shrimp in here you know I think we might have something here like that kind of looks like something swimming right so I think we do have at least a handful of shrimp in here I don't know how long ago last before the fish eats them up but maybe maybe they'll be okay looks like the walls are getting a little bit dirty that happened rather quickly I don't know what's the cause of that but I'm not opening it up anymore so we're just gonna have to deal with it well it looks like our fish is still alive so that's good news all right well I think that's gonna be it for this ecosphere clearly the fish is doing okay whether or not it's okay forever it's hard to say but is it possible that it will live a long and natural life is it gonna survive or is it a goner let me know in the comments below all right well thank you all for watching I know that you've been waiting quite a while to see this video I've been throwing out a little tiny hints about this video for the past two weeks just to drum up a little bit of hype those of you who have been following me on Twitter at hello Dustin PAC you were the first ones to see hints of this emerge and if you want to be the first to know about future projects that I'm working on in the future then I suggest that you go and follow me there I'll put the link to it down below hopefully you enjoy watching this video I certainly had a lot of fun making it and I will continue to keep you all updated on this as the days go by and as new developments happen but for now this is going to be the end of the video I hope you enjoyed it have a good one and I hope to see you in the next one you

Channel: Dustin Pak

Views: 1,255,555

Rating: 4.5505648 out of 5

Keywords: Dustin, Dustin Pak, Ecosphere, Terrarium, Biosphere, Jarrarium, Eco jar, Paludarium, Aquarium, Science, Biology, Fish, Snails, Aquatic Animals, sealed terrarium, Moss

Id: CLDgMro2VMg

Length: 13min 47sec (827 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2017