In the last two weeks, an Oil Pipe UP called Dr. Plants has been on fire.
The reason is that he sent a domineering video that looks at the title:
"I built an ecosystem over the past year, and then these things happened."
The ecosphere made by Dr. Plants is unexpectedly small and beautiful.
He simulated a tropical rainforest in his bedroom, and after various adjustments, the flora and fauna inside reached ecological balance.
So far, the video has been viewed more than 7.38 million times, and many people lament that this is bringing nature to the home...
Dr. Plants' previous videos have been about how to raise praying mantises, wasps and geckos, and there is not much content.
Who knows, he started to make a big move from a year ago, trying to create a tropical rainforest in the aquarium.
He found a few dead pieces of wood and fixed it to the board with spray foam and silicone, using it as a dense branch of the rainforest.
At the bottom of the aquarium, he laid a lot of lava rock and pottery grains as rainforest land.
The most important thing in the rainforest, of course, is the plant.
Dr. Plants raises a lot of moss, and also grows begonias, arrow-leaved seaweeds, colorful pineapples and so on.
Because the aquarium is small, the plants are planted on vertical planks, which also create a cascading rainforest effect.
To better welcome tropical residents, Dr. Plants installed spray gear in the aquarium, which sprays water 6 times a day for 20 seconds each time.
At the top, he also installed a small ventilation device to circulate the air.
There are also two LED lights there to simulate the day and night cycle.
There is even a simulated rain system in the aquarium. It rains 5 times a day, accompanied by rattling raindrops, and the LED lights will flicker and pretend to be lightning.
Dr. Plants also installed a stereo that would emit thunder when the lights flashed. It feels a little too serious...
Everything is ready to start releasing the animals.
The first batch of animals, which were accidentally put in with plants, included vegetable garden snails, planarians, ants, and various unknown bugs.
Dr. Plants ignored them, and a month later, as the moss grew stronger, he put the jumpers into the aquarium.
After another month, he felt that he could try a more complex life, so he put in some shrimp and malay snails, the former can eat small insects, the latter mainly eat algae and sediment debris.
Dr. Plants hopes that the shrimp will breed their populations and become the (temporary) overlords of the tank.
However, he was embarrassed to find that all he bought was female shrimp, so he had to drive the car back to the aquarium shop and buy back two male ones.
Soon, the female shrimp were pregnant and crawling around with big bellies. Their abdomen is full of small black dots, which are the eyes of baby shrimp.
Seeing the shrimp continue to be born, Dr. Plants planted a batch of red root duckweed, which provided them with a hiding place.
During this time, the number of Malay snails also grew rapidly. The animal is hermaphrodite, self-cloned, and grows very quickly.
Dr. Plants says he buys the snails because they like to bury themselves in the sand during the day, and the organic matter (mainly manure) that leaches into the sand and can be used as fertilizer for the plants. This is also an important step in building an ecology.
After another few dozen days, the ecology in the aquarium was somewhat unbalanced, because there were too many shrimp and malay snails.
Dr. Plants was prepared for this by introducing their natural enemy, the "Malay vampire crab".
The Malay vampire crab is a red-bodied crab with yellow eyes and pincers, no more than 5 cm long, feeding on fish, shrimp, snails and animal carcasses, as well as the rhizomes of rice and sugar cane.
Dr. Plants bought 6 Malay vampire crabs. At first, they didn't know how to prey, so he fed them the larvae of the yellow mealworm.
When the crabs are familiar with the environment, they often dive into the water to catch shrimp and dig snails in the sand. Soon, the numbers of the two animals stabilized.
After two months, the problem of shrimp and snail plague was solved, but a new situation emerged...
Malay vampire crabs are also starting to give birth to babies in large numbers.
This is actually predictable, because the Malay vampire crab is the top of the food chain in the aquarium, and only it eats others, no one can eat it.
But Dr. Plants was still a little surprised, he didn't expect it to be so fast.
"One day, I was confused to see a group of baby crabs roaming in an aquarium. They are not much larger than sesame seeds, and their body color fits well into the background and is well camouflaged. He said in the video.
"You can see a baby crab eating algae. While they're all cute, I'm really worried that there will be too many crabs. ”
"So, I decided to bring in a higher-level predator, the Wailing Scaled Toe Tiger."
The Scaly-toed Tiger is a gecko that lives in Southeast Asia, reaching up to 8 cm in length and a gray-brown body that feeds on insects and small arthropods.
During the day, they hide under the leaves of large plants such as betel nuts and bananas, and come out at night.
Dr. Plants bought 3 female scaly-toed tigers, which formed a "crab hunting squad" to hunt for crabs among the dense leaves.
Because of their small size difference, the scaled-toed tiger cannot prey on adult crabs, but the small crabs with sesame seeds are their favorite. They often adhere to the glass wall, finding the right time to eat the crab babies below.
Poor baby crabs can only hide in the deciduous bushes at the bottom of the aquarium all day long, living on a little bit of algae. There are a lot of plants, fallen leaves and sand here, and it is very messy that it is difficult for the scaled-toed tiger to find them.
When the babies have grown into large crabs, they can finally climb out and live in the canopy of the aquarium.
"Adult crabs no longer need protection from the ground and can climb into the canopy in search of food. At this time, they were too big to be eaten by geckos. Dr. Plants said as a narrator.
Adult Malay vampire crabs find their ideal home in the leaf base of the bromeliad, where there are many leaves and a lot of water is stored in the center of the leaves. It resembles both land and pond, which is perfect for this amphibian.
The mourning scaled tiger also regards pineapple leaves as writers, and whenever it rains in the aquarium, they hide under the leaves to avoid the rain.
"At one point, I even saw crabs and geckos sitting side by side in harmony. They became neighbors. ”
When it rains, the scaled toe tiger will make a "creaking" sound accompanied by thunder, which is the communication between geckos. Dr. Plants sits in his bedroom and feels like he's really in the rainforest.
After many more months, the number of crabs in the aquarium was controlled, and the plants grew more and more dense and beautiful.
Everything was perfect, but one thing...
The number of geckos is a bit too much.
Although Dr. Plants bought 3 female scaled toe tigers, they are different from ordinary geckos and can reproduce parthenogenetically. That is, clone yourself.
In the cracks of the aquarium, Dr. Plants found a lot of geckos eggs, and there were also many small geckos between the leaves.
They are very small, agile, and like to lick the dew on the leaves. Whenever people lean over to look, they quickly hide in the leaves of pineapples.
By the time Dr. Plants discovered it, the number of geckos had reached 30. Although he said in the video that the ecology in the aquarium had reached equilibrium and that no animal was over-represented, he still decided to remove the gecko.
"How to say it, leaving them in the aquarium, I feel uneasy. So, I made a new home for geckos, and I will shoot videos of them later. ”
Without geckos, what about crabs?
Fortunately, the fratricidal cannibalism of the Malay vampire crab can control the number of its own population.
Dr. Plants observed that large crabs often eat small crabs, and sometimes small crabs have reached half the size of large crabs and are still eaten.
At first, Dr. Plants lamented how barbaric nature was.
After finding that it is impossible to raise geckos in it, this feature becomes an advantage, allowing the ecology of the aquarium to develop steadily.
In this way, after a year of adjustment, the rainforest in the bedroom has no need for human intervention, forming a well-circulating ecosystem.
"The aquarium reaches the limit of beauty. This beauty comes from its constant evolution, with new life, new plants, and even new generations every day. Dr. Plants sighed.
After this success, he said that after that, he will also make a aquarium for marine ecology and a bumblebee ecological tank.
He had bought a 100-gallon oversized water tank and was loading dead wood.
Many netizens joked in the comment area that maybe in a few decades, his aquarium will have wonderful results:
"Po Lord 20 years later: '... Wolves upset the balance of my eco-tank, so I decided to bring in a higher-level predator, the tiger. ’ ”
"25 years later: Like you can see, this ecosystem has grown a lot. The sequoia grew so well that the beaver built a dam between the two villages, and the humans inside invented their own official currency. Wow. ”
It's not that exaggerated, but it would be fun to think about it if Dr. Plants continued to put animals in the aquarium.
In a small glass jar, there is a colorful vegetation, complex and active animals,
And all this happens quietly in the corner of the bedroom.
It feels like it's a work of art...