Jars - a question

[beastie]

So, I am very bad at throwing plants out and I have several 3 liter jars

What I do is I plop the plant in and put water and wait and see. Not sure where to go from there. Both jars have been sitting on a windowsill for months.

One is stargrass, I see a bunch of algae and also, bunch of snails. How can they survive? No aeration, no nothing, I just sometimes add water in. It may be tank water, it may be fresh water.

Second one is even worse. It has java moss which is way nicer in half of my tanks?! I also put a piece of pothos to root and ficus to root and now the root systems and the java moss are one. I dont think it will ever be separated. Also the amount of mulm!! omg

What now? 🙂

BTW for summer time I have a 20-30 liter vase that I may keep outside and see what happens. Maybe some daphnias or infusoria will happen. 

[Fish Folk]

Cool! 😎

I think that there are enough usable minerals and nutrients in the tank water. Add sunshine, and your plants are definitely going to thrive. If you wanted to explore more, you could add a few drops of Easy Green each week to see a huge burst of life.

If you found the right creatures, you could probably propagate something small in there. Aeration would be a major concern though. Are you familiar with Foo the Flowerhorn on YouTube? Great channel with deep reflection on a single nano tank over the course of long periods of time. Here's one where everything is explained:

If you follow some of this instruction, I think you could build up a nice little biome and keep a couple shrimp in your jar. Perhaps a single nano fish. Sparkling Gourami might be an option. They're also called "croaking" gourami because of the sounds they make in the water. A small Betta might work. I'd suggest something more like a Betta imbellis rather than a long-finned Betta splendens. Any of these Anabantids are good because they can absorb air from the surface through their labyrinth organ. On a tangent... I am very curious about these fringe-of-the-hobby / barely classified gouramis. I do not know what space they need, but man of man . . . they're gorgeous: check out the Parosphromenus project

[Tanked]

I kept a tall window jar for one season. The idea was to place a few pieces of Duckweed in it and see if it would live up to its reputation.  It did not, but it did develop much longer roots than expected. Eventually it picked up some wildlife and if you were lucky you could see the convection currents caused by the sun's heat.

Today I keep a 10 gallon that goes by several different names, but it is where plants go to recover or die. It has a light and nothing else but aquarium water.  The snails that live there survive by eating the decaying plant matter.  Some of the plants also grow better here than in the other tanks.