Ecospheres!

[Vbkid]

So I've decided to make an ecosphere for my desk at work. For anyone not familiar, it's a sealed environment normally with shrimp, some algae, a plant or 2, and a few snails. It's meant to continuously renew itself with only light coming in that is required for photosynthesis.
A quick video I found: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A_tVN6Uf7Y
I was just wondering if anyone had experience with one and had any advice on the best plants or the ratio of plants to animals?
I'll definitely keep this updated when I get mine going at the very least!

 

[SubRosa]

There is only one animal species even remotely suitable to keep in one of these sealed environments, the Hawaiian Volcano Shrimp. The only reason they're remotely suitable is because each individual will live 12-15 years, and they're adapted to extremely harsh environments. The individual will actually slowly shrink in size as it feeds off of its own reserves. Ecospheres are one of those things in the aquarium hobby where people think that they're proving something, but in reality they're merely getting away with something. Far better for any inhabitants involved for you to get a small 1 gal container that's open to the atmosphere, and deal with feeding, evaporation, and here's that dirty word..........water changes!!!

 

[Millipede]

yeah. you'll most likely end up with a sealed container of stagnant muck

 

[adnedarn]

Ecospheres are pretty dang neat! I've always liked them.. One of the companies that supports this forum sells them, and actually they are on sale right now. If you decide to purchase one, instead of building (or maybe along with ) please consider them, although I do not know how their prices compare to other companies... http://www.puremodern.com/search?q=ecosphere (they are even upgrading you to priority overnight shipping during the sale)
Andrew

To edit and add... If you plan to build and do not have access to the stuff you need, try out plantedtank.net people there always seem to be selling stuff and you could probably put a request out for some red cherry shrimp and some type of moss... like java moss... I have plenty of that moss, and maybe even some other fresh water bugs commonly seen in those ecospheres in some of my empty annual killfish tanks, but my cherry shrimp never really strive so not sure I have a few of those to spare.. good luck!

 

[Jcal]

I tried one of these. Epic fail. It lasted a few weeks before it was a betta tank.