Ecosphere 1 Month Update | Projects

[@LifeinJars]

Your intro's are always so funny. Don't stop with those!

[@charleyedwards2121]

YAY

[@morphineprincess098]

I may not create alotta the stiff you guys do, but i love watching thesw while i paint and sew, amazing content to consume while your hands are busy. My bf still listens to my recaps !

[@TerraTinkering]

I feel honored that we can inspire someone in another set of hobbies separate from our own. Thanks for keeping your boyfriend in the loop on our projects too, haha- I'm glad he's still intrigued by them also!

[@Niko-of5tl]

I love your guys channel so muuuuchh❤️

[@TerraTinkering]

Glad to hear it, we will relish in your compliment for the rest of the day, thanks for watching and enjoying our content so much!

[@terradescato1119]

congrats with 8k!

[@TerraTinkering]

Thanks Descato!

[@kenthecoolguy7779]

never give up and keep up the good work

[@TerraTinkering]

Thanks Ken, we'll do our best!

[@kenthecoolguy7779]

how do i chat with you

[@TerraTinkering]

Right now the best way is either through discord/twitter/instagram. I mentioned facebook but forgot I hadn't quite made a group/page yet for this. I need to get that all workout out quick now haha.

[@kenthecoolguy7779]

so i can message you in messanger

[@TerraTinkering]

Heya sorry for the delay, I'm working it out right now and should have a link shortly that you can use to contact via Facebook messenger!

[@lobau_]

Very clean setup, very nice color, and great natural light! You made a great space in there for your channel :) Add a couple of shelves with nice projects on them and it will look perfect :D

[@TerraTinkering]

Definitely, I think this room will evolve with our channel, we are moving a rack in there to put some of our projects on soon too, but I'd like to add some art or photos to the walls to make it a bit less plain. Plus that room has awful textured walls which stick out like a sore thumb haha.

[@myeroku4182]

Love that Eco Jar where can we get one of those - the one with your succulent on top - gorgeous!

[@TerraTinkering]

We got the Jar at a store called At Home, and then we replaced the original top to the jar with a small fish bowl we got at the Dollar Tree.

[@wunderwaffle2564]

OMG THE FLOATING TERRARIUM'S MAGIC SPELL IS STILL WORKING THAT'S THE BEST WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA I HAVE EVER SEEN

[@triopster2189]

Great job with that drift wood ecosphere! It seems like it has a good balance.

[@TerraTinkering]

Yeah, I'm excited to see how it continues to do as time goes on!

[@TechplantChannel]

Can you add some bleach or alcohol to the outer layer of the floating EcoSphere to inhibit algae growth? Maybe 25% Rubbing Alcohol and 75% water would keep the water balls from shirviling up? Side note, You and Dustin Pak got me to try making one of these too, super interesting. I enjoy watching your vids, keep up the good work!

[@TerraTinkering]

We're not too worried about the water beads drying or shriveling, just concerned about algae growth really. We considered adding something to the water like rubbing alcohol as well but we're thinking distilled might be fine, if algae does bloom we'll do an update and probably tweak it a bit to avoid that in the future.

[@someguy3186]

Having recently started raising brine shrimp, I can say that a brine shrimp ecosphere that lasts for a decent amount of time is going to be very difficult for a number of reasons. The advantages of brine shrimp is that they can they can handle very poor water conditions, including ammonia levels that would quickly kill even the hardiest aquatic creatures. The cons though are that they grow quickly, breed quickly, and eat a whole lot. What this means is that your jar can quickly become filled with dead bodies, molted skins, and brine shrimp poop. Oxygen and food running out are also issues. All of this means that the whole thing can crash pretty quickly. For the best chances, you'd need to start out with a very small amount of brine shrimp and a whole lot algae (and it would need to be the kind that they can eat since they're filter feeders). You'd need enough algae so that it can keep up with brine shrimp eating needs while also growing fast enough to suck up the water's wastes and produce oxygen.

[@Helveteshit]

@Terra Tinkering. If you want, you can experiment with moisture in ecospheres. If you can obtain similar sized containers. Plastic, non-plastic or so. Perhaps a bunch of larger lunch boxes? Then add a bit of gravel at the bottom. A mesh and a soil mix that seems consistent. Add this to all three lunch boxes. Let the soil dry out fully then grind up some charcoal in that ... Grinder thingie you had. That you used for the moss. Sprinkle the ash across the soil. Next comes the fun part. Use some sort of plant, not moss. That doesn't grow too large. Sprinkle these into the containers. After that, use a Pipet to add droplets of water into every container. Count every drop and note it down on a tape for the box. Then seal it up. See if you can understand roughly how to control the humidity of the container this way. And you may have higher success rate with ecospheres that require drier conditions yet require some moisture to be present.

[@TerraTinkering]

I don't honestly know many plants that stay incredibly small, aside from moss, any suggestions?

[@Helveteshit]

Hmm... I do not know their names really. Quite hard to identify them without a proper book or website of reference. But, generally you should look at rocky regions. Where there is little soil yet plants living. Typically, smaller plants tend to thrive in these type of atmospheres. I typically see them on those walls people used to separate their properties.

[@Harbonium]

Hey Terra, I never succeeded to maintain dugweed more than a month in a closed ecosphere, it's just melting. Can you give some advice about the light? Maybe the dug weed doesn't like so much direct sunlight because the temperature inside the system is going up .... hmmm

[@kat369-mine]

Have you checked out Foo the Flowerhorn? His project is nearly a year old now. You can just sit and watch for hours.

[@TerraTinkering]

I have actually! Though I don't think I've seen a year update on it. Foo does some amazing projects and videos too!

[@kat369-mine]

@@TerraTinkering Yeah, 12 month update. 3weeks ago.

[@jakemicallef3682]

Make a triop ecosphere dude!! Research it they’re awesome

[@TerraTinkering]

They definitely are awesome and we have wanted to hatch some for some time now, though we haven't made the jump on that yet. The problem with triops in an ecosphere is that the various species are either carnivores or omnivores, but I haven't heard of any species that only consume algae or plant matter. This is an issue because keeping a large enough breeding supply of micro fauna for them to consume within a sealed ecosystem wouldn't be easy without going to a decently large aquarium- which after filling I'd likely be entirely unable to move. I'd love to keep them in an aquarium though down the road.

[@jakemicallef3682]

Terra Tinkering For sure. My uncle had a colony of them in a 20 long. They were awesome and ate krill as baby’s and blood worms as adults. They do well with the species of pygmy corydoras (corydoras pygmaeus, corydoras hasbrosus etc) and also top dwelling fish like hatchetfish. Please have a sand substrate though because they LOVE digging

[@spikerslittleworlds8156]

I love that mat of azolla and duckweed! And don't feel bad about using definitely a bunch. Sometimes I feel like half my editing is to reduce my use of affirmative words like that :-D

[@TerraTinkering]

Yeah it looks really neat, we're definitely happy with how it turned out, haha.

[@spikerslittleworlds8156]

Terra Tinkering Hahaha love it

[@mariakoth]

so aquarium plants melt when put in a new tank and grow back after a while, the one you showed does that..keep up the good work!

[@TerraTinkering]

Awesome! We have used them in other stuff and love when they really take off! Hopefully this one bounces back well like you said, they're really neat plants haha.

[@anuenuer]

Aloha from Hawaii! Thanks for the update. I think maybe you might be into an ‘Ōpae’ula (Halocaridina rubra, the Hawaiian red shrimp or volcano shrimp ) closed tank setup. I’ve seen some really cool ones out there and the tiny red shrimp do great in closed setups. Just a suggestion. 🤙🏾

[@TerraTinkering]

We definitely have heard of those and they are really intriguing, though we have no local stores that carry them and a single shrimp caries a hefty price online so we haven't made the jump to ordering any yet, but maybe down the road!

[@anuenuer]

Awesome! Hey if I can ship them out from Hawaii legally I’d be down to buy the shrimp for you if you went in on the shipping. They’re ridiculously cheap over here on the big island (like 20 shrimp for a dollar). I’ll check on it and let you know if I could ship out live shrimps. Aloha. 🤙🏾

[@TerraTinkering]

As long as they could get to Virginia safe and sound, I wouldn't want them to die in shipping. That'd be awesome though! ^.^

[@FieryCoal]

Good luck! Prove Dustin wrong about brine shrimp ecospheres

[@FieryCoal]

Shame that the camera can’t focus well on the drift wood, but it still looks neat

[@TerraTinkering]

Yeah, it really does! There's a neat little cave under it as well which I figured would make a nice hide for the various critters, but caves are dark and it's right in the center of a fairly large ecosphere so it's definitely a challenge to focus on.

[@magyarcsaszar2575]

What happened with the moss lawn

[@TerraTinkering]

We haven't really gone back to working on it yet though we probably should go back to that soon. Pulling the grass up isn't very fun, it's almost all weeds.

[@magyarcsaszar2575]

Terra Tinkering Thank you for fast reply!

[@FieryCoal]

Wow, I’m late

[@vogelkonigin3303]

Please get some sound panels for the room. Too much dead space causing bad audio. I'm currently working on a nano tank. Can't wait to post it in the discord once it's done!

[@TerraTinkering]

Yeah the audio has a bit of a hollow echo to it, we don't have much furniture in there and it's a new mic we're using but once we get some more furniture it should help out. We actually were planning on making a new ecosphere this week but the rain all week made our plans change, haha. I can't wait to see what you've made!

[@alexcaffrey983]

Terra Tinkering For a temporary solution, pull your shot in a bit and put up some sound blankets, or tack some sheets to the wall in front and to the sides of you.

[@Alex-ub8db]

Terra Tinkering are guys interested at all in doing and videos on the technical side of your videos like DIY soundabsorption projects for instant? I would personally be interested in this content also. Btw It's nice seeing you both get more comfortable with the camera and seeing your channel grow! ^^

[@TerraTinkering]

I did consider putting sheets up though I didn't want to put holes in the wall to do that. I think if we used our lapel the audio would be good but the shotgun mic has honestly been really nice when editing since we don't have to sync the audio and everything. We'll figure something out soon for it though.

[@alexcaffrey983]

Terra Tinkering On locations where we haven’t had access to sound blanket racks and haven’t been able to tack anything up, in museums and warehouses where the space is just too big, we’ve used makeshift racks made from various things, taped up wires/strings to hang them on, the best was to get those removable ‘command strips’, those things are magic, super easy to deal with. Nothing beats a good blanket setup, makeshift or otherwise.

[@toni5543]

New videos please x

[@magyarcsaszar2575]

Wait I got a heart but no reply? Will the answer be in next episode?

[@TerraTinkering]

Sometimes we're on our phones and don't have time to reply but we generally try to respond to everyone who asks a question- so now and then we'll thumbs up and heart things and reply a little later on. ^.^

[@kenthecoolguy7779]

thanks guys for the like on my comment

[@megazenn22]

wrong framerate

[@TerraTinkering]

I'm curious how you can tell what framerate we're using- though we intentionally chose to try out 24 fps for this video, many videographers recommend it and seem to say they feel it looks more natural than 30fps but we're amateurs really when it comes to recording video and it's all a learn as we go sort of scenario for us. Lately we've been using 60 fps for slow-motion shots, but it definitely bumps the videos file size up when we do.

[@megazenn22]

24fps looks more natural? nature is like 999999fps so thats bullcrap xD 24fps doesnt make sense on 60hz displays, it has the same smoothness as 20fps and it looks terrible in my opinion, please use at least 30, 60 is only really necessary for fast movement like sports, but it does look a lot better for everything in my opinion :)

[@TerraTinkering]

Constructive criticism is always appreciated, that being said we are going to continue to experiment with the way we shoot and render our content while we determine what we want to go with and what suites us best overall. 24fps has been the golden standard throughout a huge portion of the video production industry for a long time. When an industry that large with way better equipment than we can ever get continues to use it to this day, we figure it is something we should consider as well for our own content.

[@megazenn22]

24fps became the standard when film cost $20 per image, 30fps became the standard when 240p was the maximum youtube could handle, but sure, film how you want lol