Should I aerate a culture?

[farnsy]

The days when I can get out to a nearby stream/pond and the days in which I have a chance to do microscopy don't seem to align well, so I'm looking for ways to keep a little micro ecosystem going. I've been using a small jar, but I keep having the result that it starts to smell super bad and gets dominated by a couple of types of bacteria and ciliates, unlike the wide variety of stuff I see when the water is fresh. The smell is a problem and so is the lack of variety. If I try to feed the system, this happens quickly. But it happens even if I don't. I'm wondering if it gets nasty and lots of stuff dies because the jars I keep them in lack sufficient oxygen. I mean, I leave the lid off, but there isn't any motion in the water, as there is in the habitat from which I take the sample.

I'm thinking of keeping a small tank with a few aquatic plants and light in order to maintain a convenient source.

My question is whether having an air bubbler in such a habitat would contribute to or detract from the variety of available organisms. What do you think? Are the plants sufficient to oxygenate the tank? Does moving water reduce or increase the available number of microbes?

I've also been thinking of keeping some kind of smaller animal in there. Perhaps triops. Or daphnia (although I know they might eat some of the organisms I'm interested in, they would be interesting to see themselves). Any ideas of creatures I should keep in there? I don't particularly want fish as I am doing this for microscopy only and don't want to worry about being humane.

[Hobbyst46]

Previous posts related to this subject :
https://www.microbehunter.com/microscop ... tem#p49144
https://www.microbehunter.com/microscop ... ble#p53340

[MicroBob]

There is a nice little book on this topic:
http://www.mikrohamburg.de/Tips/SCHERREN-GESAMT.pdf

I can recommend to include soil, a filtre layer and gravel to hold this down in to the aquarium and plant it with water plants:

I set them up this way:
2cm garden soil
layer of paper tissue as a filter
2cm of fine gravel
waterplants stuck into the gravel
filling with pond water
NO FISH - they eat everything else

They probably last indefinitely, sometimes a bit of attention is needed
The tank can be influenced by:
- Blowing in air
- Nutrition with ground rice
- weeding
- adding a bit of hay
- adding water (rain water)
- adding placton samples
- adding bits of wood, stones

Most of the time there is no maintenance apart from topping up the water level.
All the time different plants and animals emerge and prosper and vanish again: https://vimeo.com/378528648
It is possible too to keep such a plancton aquarium closed. I heard from someone who opened a little plancton aquarium that was sealed for 25 years. And it still contained lots of species!

Bob

[farnsy]

Thanks, Hobbyist. Those are some great threads. I'll look into them a little deeper.

MicroBob, thanks for your suggestions. Very helpful. I think that first link may not be the right one, though. If you get a moment, I'd be interested in the other thread you were thinking of.

[MicroBob]

I'm sorry, I have corrected the link in the original post now. The walking stick is important!

[farnsy]

MicroBob, that book is amazing. What a great resource! Thanks for sharing. 1894...I guess this hobby has been going strong for quite a while!

We should write a little page in the wiki on this topic and include a link to this book or something.