HOWTO make a desktop biosphere
KQED TV's science program QUEST visited the MAKE: magazine laboratory where Jake McKenzie showed how to make a desktop biosphere, complete with shrimp, snails, and pond scum. Once you seal the biosphere, you never have to open it again! Link (Thanks, Shawn Connally!)
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Awesome! This seems to include a detailed desription of a few that lasted a few years. The fancy-pants commercial ones I always used to see in the mall claim to last that long, but they look too sterile for my tastes.
I want some grime in my biosphere.
What a beautifully Zen project to undertake.
Unfortunately, at the time of my writing this comment, the link is dead. I'll remember to look for more info on this tomorrow, though. Thanks :)
Going to make one right away. Is it juvenile to point out that Andrea Kissack is an anagram of Andrea Kickass?
Didn't this used to be called a terrarium?
The description is the best. "[C]onstruct the latest must have, do-it-yourself hacks, whiz-bang gizmos and techno do-dads."
So much hyphenation. "Whiz-bang".
This is such a neat idea. However I have no patience to make one myself. Can't I just buy one? lol.
#6 Abby Normal: I think you just invented a new cottage industry. I'm quiting my day job!
#7 Ned613: I'd buy one.
You can buy them from EcoSphere but they're not cheap. They run $100-$500, and there is a $40-$150 recharge cost. They are, however, much more elegant than the mason jar versions.
Putting a shrimp in tiny, concentrated pond in a jar with rapidly depleting oxygen supply sounds like a bad plan to me! It certainly doesn't sound like science.
Dear Guineapig
The whole idea is that the shrimp is in balance with plants also contained therein. It's an elegant little balancing act that if done well takes a long time to slowly run down. Exactly what you put in (and leave out), how much sunlight you permit, the temperature, all have critical bearing.
Do you see a larger analogy?
A long time ago, when the Earth was green
There was more kinds of animals than you've ever seen
They'd run around free while the Earth was being born
And the loveliest of all was the ........
once upon a time,I met a diminutive Thai biologist.I remember the name as something like "Prepaseery" This was such a very long time ago that there were still trees in Thailand. She was a passionate conservationist/environmentalist and was fighting an ongoing struggle with logging concerns bent on cutting every last tree, Lorax and all. She referred to the forest as the long, beautiful tresses of the land, and how disaster followed when it was shorn and rains washed the precious soil into then clogged rivers.
One of her projects was the use of "Prepassariums" to teach children about the need to balance the environment and to understand there were consequences for actions. These of course were biospheres.