I have a solar-powered jar that's been going for about 2 years now. At first it just had a single scrawny dwarf sag, about .25" of dirt, and a couple snails. After about a year, the snails had doubled the depth of the substrate, the dwaft sag was a jungle, and there was continually a huge amount of hair algae during the changing seasons. All critters remained very small, despite their age. About 2 months ago, I added enough fine black gravel to make 1" of substrate, and somehow a small red rili shrimp had made its way to the jar. It's grown very slowly, but it's now 3/4" long, and developing a saddle, but has fairly bad color, as to be expected. Now I try to imitate life in a tiny pond, including adding food (maybe once a month), "rain fall", "droughts", and an animal feeding on the plants, removing them. There's a rich diversity of life, less hair algae, or large amounts of algae in general. I'll add pics tomorrow, when there's some sun
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