Once you have a jar ready, you can go make your ecosphere!

Ecospheres can be made using a variety of water bodies including rivers, ponds, lakes and vernal pools. Be sure to only

use water bodies far away from any roads or any other sources of pollution. It is also very useful if you can find a water body that contains natural aquatic plants (more on this later).

You will usually find the most biodiversity in woodland ponds and vernal pools. This is because they tend to contain less predators allowing more vulnerable species to survive. This is especially true with a vernal pool which dries up seasonally, meaning no predator species can colonise it. Woodland ponds are also biodiverse because they have a constant source of food from leaves that fall off the trees. If a pond gets too much direct sunlight, this can cause an algae bloom which may reduce biodiversity. Rivers contain less algae, which is a good thing, because too much algae can destroy an ecosphere. I do not recommend using large fast flowing rivers because you will find a lot less biodiversity. The same is true for large lakes due to there being more predator species.

I would use either a slow flowing river or stream, shaded pond (not necessarily a woodland one just protected from direct sunlight) or a vernal pool. If you want even more biodiversity, I would highly recommend using multiple water sources at once (this is not necessary at all, I just do it because I have multiple water bodies near my home).

If you were to go this route, I would suggest using water from a river as it is much less saturated with nutrients which could cause the ecosphere to crash. Along with substrate from all available water sources to pick up organisms from all the different ecosystems.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/NfK5qF2dUIIoowswTXJ_snFNkIG9o9AWTlNUIaDjXu43uQ3acR4YNbq0rPVwCVFW0_WfaqS5iE_nhOxMfXsnEixKDn3_e2Chx-E2RyLCiVrJH_BTv4BOGTaiJn0RKMf5rs-LgnFxDXbUfBE1Ruck2CjBGfQWTK0dE1xcbmXJhy1zpTvgEFudH3dLvBxk2Q

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/7hvrqoKNKev57YPew5XA7Iqg8CXwOnelTdto7b8QKADkA5tVxg0_BRyDe8pAYx3V4rmxx6Zk3tJzHnhAgiQ1hi5dD1nGq3jLoh0gQnfNDUD5842WbUiIvNqMv0M8KBwuYgiIuqBvXMyWDK0JXMrdxJEW4fvEHnmFG5eWf9BykiX0YR22dXILR4TS8nzf0g

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/vyuYgqGurwbhYa3DbfM2otqhx0taRTbYFc4AbTeMq9cV1Wx3AwHJm-m7A5CU-KJ2HH_eVXCkFndlUCe8-UCmI2Pqk0NLrQsPEgGsLRl6ePs6tFEkm62dzomvUvDR43RQAHdhW-51mLY052uDQet5YJrwsDc4oXX2lJQlPwX0OR9-q_LjUN1nqc7NtanWWQ

For reference, a crash is when the ecosystem loses its ability to sustain itself due to imbalances.These imbalances can be caused by factors such as too little oxygen, too much dead matter, too many of a certain organism or too many nutrients in the water. Just about anything that upsets the careful balance within an ecosphere can cause a crash. This almost always results in a mass extinction and is unfixable.