I would recommend using an air tight container so your water vapor doesn't
escape. I
can't spare many words, I'm too busy. I hope this helps!

--- In homemadebiospheres@yahoogroups.com, "tyebye2002" <tyebye2002@...> wrote:
>
> I attempted to make a terrestrial biosphere a few months ago out of
> one of those plastic containers that grocery stores use for holding
> pasteries and such.
> It had a 2.5cm of dirt in it X-x I think theres clay in it because it
> held water really well. The surface area of the dirt was about 11cm X
> 10cm.
> I placed in it a few small leafy plants, two different dandelion
> species, the one that most people are familiar with, and a smaller
> one that has "Hairy leaves". There was also a lot of moss.
> I had place a small bottlecap in one corner and filled it with water
> to make a sort of pond or pool of drinking water ^-^; (I remember
> from a guide on caring for millipedes that they need a small amount
> of drinking water). I had even made a mechanism from a chamber I
> attached to the roof of the container and a sheet of plastic with
> holes scattered throughout it to simulate rain.
>
> For animals, I had:
> 4 wood lice(AKA "Pill Bugs")
> 3 millipedes
> 1 white slug X-x don't know the species
>
> The animals all seemed pretty content with their environment for the
> entire 4 months they lived in it @___@ but two things went wrong that
> caused a total die-off of the biosphere(or at least I believe these
> are the two main causes):
> 1- The rain simulator broke X-x and the biosphere started slowly
> drying out(looking at it now theres some small holes in the roof from
> where the rain simulator broke)
> 2- All of the moss started releasing spores at once, and untill
> things started drying out, it looked like the spores were going to
> choke everything out. Only one of the pillbugs seemed showed any
> unhealthiness after it tho.
>
> So now I have a biosphere full of dry, fairly loose dirt that could
> hold water if I added some, full of dry dead plants, and animals.
> One idea I was considering was filling dumping all of into a larger
> container, adding some new dirt as well, perhaps some gravel or
> rocks, more animals, maybe an earthworm to turn the dead stuff into
> nutrients for the soil + new plants?
>
> any advice anyone can give me to prevent another die-off, or at least
> to prevent a total die-off for the same reasons as before?
>