Producer'S Notes - MAKE It at Home: Table-Top Biosphere
Do-it-yourself tabletop biosphere..Last season, QUEST TV went on a field trip to the Maker Faire to see some of the wacky do-it-yourself things coming out of people’s garage work shops. This season, we took Quest Radio Editor Andrea Kissack out to the Make Magazine Test Lab to tinker and experiment with some of our favorite DIY science projects.
We started with a Table-Top Biosphere, or as MAKE called it, a “Tabletop Shrimp Support Module” or TSSM. The whole idea is to create an entirely self-sustaining aquatic ecosystem within a completely sealed jam jar. If you do it right, your freshwater shrimp “aquanaut” will be able to survive for months without your ever needing to feed it or even open the jar. The ecological balance you create supplies all the air, filtering and food for all the creatures within the jar to survive in perfect harmony. If only the real world was this easy.
Watch the “MAKE it at Home: Table-Top Biosphere” TV Story online, as well as find additional links and resources.
Here are the instructions to make your own table-top biosphere.
Chris Bauer is a Segment Producer for television on QUEST.
Hi KQED,
I am interested in the description/list of how to make the Table-Top Biosphere. Where is the list? or are the directions in the video?
Thanks, Cathleen
PS the fresh water shrimp, Syncaris pacifica, is listed by both the Federal Gov. and the State of California as endangered. I DO NOT think you should be advocating folks use a freshwater shrimp as an animal in the biosphere! It might encourage folks “to take” from the wild!!
So the video podcast tells you to visit this webpage & this webpage tells you to watch the video podcast. I guess I’m stuck here in a loop for the rest of my life with no Table-Top Biosphere. List please?
I too came in search of this mysterious list, alas with no avail.
http://cachefly.oreilly.com/make/wp_aquanaut.pdf
Thank you Ricardo - that’s a much more direct link than what we had above.
The shrimp looks to me like a freshwater ghost shrimp - certainly not endangered, they are usually sold at pet stores as feeders for large fish. You can get them for less than a dollar a piece.
If you had a large enough set up, you could get a few and they might breed, and you could see several generations of them.
I made a short video about my BioJar. Also found some links to other ecosphere sites and lesson plans for teachers. What a fun project. My jar is still going after 8 months.
Important note about this project: you really need to follow the instructions closely. It’s not the same as just throwing some species in a jar! I’d say that the only variation you should tempt yourself with is using a larger jar. Cheers, Martin
Editor’s Note: For those reading at home, Martin John Brown (in the comments above) contributed the original Table-top Biosphere instructions to MAKE - we could not have done it without him. Go check out bottleworld.net for more of Martin’s work and writings.
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Hello:
I tried to view the pdf file “http://cachefly.oreilly.com/make/wp_aquanaut.pdf” but got the message:
“The file is damaged and could not be repaired”.
Is there another link which I could use to access the same instructions? Thanks.