[ony]

I found this in the sales and would love some ideas. I put a large apple next to it for scale but its about 1 foot wide at the base. It needs plants (obviously), substrate and ideally some sort of tiny livestock (triops?). I have a mini heater that will go in if required but the only hardscape items I have that fit through the neck are some small slate pieces.

 

[somewhatshocked]

If it were me, I'd go one of two routes:

1. Some easy stem plants like Bacopa and Ludwigia in the center that get pretty tall with no hardscape. Go with Cherry Shrimp and snails.
   
2. Get a nice branch of Manzanita or other spindly driftwood and attach a bunch of moss to it, put Anubias nana 'Petite' at the bottom. Cherries and snails again.

It appears to be large enough that you could hide a small sponge filter in there with ease.

 

[c_gwinner]

Is it made of plastic? It looks so from the picture.

You could do like somewhatshocked mentioned in number 1. I would put a sponge filter in the middle and surround it with some stem plants so that the bubbles would look like the flask were boiling or something.

I think it would be hard to fit certain hard scapes into the opening, but it could still be managed.

Opae ula could work in there as well with a little lava rock hard scape.

 

[ony]

Opae ula are awesome and apparently you can get them in the UK too

Do they cope with summer highs of about 30*C? My cherry shrimp didn't do so well with the heat last year so I won't be getting any more.

Edit: Its glass and weighs a ton, the photo isn't very good.

 

[somewhatshocked]

30C is too warm for just about any shrimp you can keep. If your water is getting above 75, it should be easy to cool any tank with a cheap fan.

Temperatures here were routinely 40C for several weeks in 2012 and I had no problem cooling tanks down.

Opae (Halocaridina rubra) could work. Ideally, you'd need to keep a specific gravity (salinity) of about 1.012.

 

[jarvitron]

Super cool. You could make one amazing looking wabi kusa in there with just a few cm of water, the beaker shape would keep the humidity up and the plants would probably go nuts. The trimming/shaping would probably be a PITA.