My attempt at creating a closed system aquarium using ghost shrimp

First, I collected pond water. Well actually I did this last in ingredient collection, but you should do this FIRST

Here is all the ingredients laid out

From left to right: Container from a relish jar from work, pond water from a pond in Asheville, Mondo Grass (this is debated about being aquatic), Temple Compacta from PetSmart, 4 ghost shrimp from PetSmart, a 5lb bag of rocks from PetSmart, and a cute little toy from PetSmart

I littered the bottom with rocks, shoved the grass and temple into it, then added more to keep it secure

Some of the water came from the Mondo Grass bag which was in the PetSmart ghost shrimp tank, I had to empty some original water to fit my hand in without overflowing

Picture from above, you can see the 4 Temple shoots

Here's the shrimpys! You need to float the bag in the container first to equalize temperature so it minimizes shock

There's two females and two males. The two females are pregnant

Early cat tax, my girlfriend's cats. She just got them from home, they're so cute. This is Eskimo. Eskimo is my favorite

Here's a picture of three of the buggers, and the cute little decoration thingy

Sorry for rotation, noticed it too late

Here's a shot of the entire tank, you can see a shrimpy under one of the front grass leaves

I fed them some algae wafers as well to help algae growth, and to keep them from eating the entire tank clean

Now this was an interesting development, because this female was on the edge of giving birth a few hours later!

We think this is a baby shrimp, although it might have just been a water creature that came with the pond water

However later that night, all the shrimpys died and I had to rebuild the tank. Here it is completed and new!

This one only has ONE shrimp. I'm pretty sure they all ate the algae too fast and so I only bought one this time. This is the tank right after I built it and brought it home. It's murkier obviously, and I ditched the Mondo Grass, instead grabbing two unknown plants from the pond, one free floating and one planted

I also remade the base, first digging up mud to actually root the plants in as a substrate, and then adding gravel in order to keep them rooted and filter particulates (I also did research for this build)

And it came with snails!

I'm assuming the mud I dug up brought some snails with it. They're happily roaming around helping shrimpy. This is after I dumped about 20% of the water and refilled it with tap water to clear it up a little bit. If you're using tap water at all you should leave the water out for 24 hours so that the chemicals in it can dissipate, then add it to the system

Here's a snail swimming on the underside of the water

No. I'm fucking serious. I found him sticking TO THE UNDERSIDE OF THE SURFACE OF THE WATER. Snails are fucking awesome

And here's the happy shrimpy! You can see him a little left of center. There's a good reason they're called ghost shrimp

If people want, I'll update later with how it's going in the system. This is my second iteration of my first attempt at anything, so I don't expect good results, but let's see what happens. And if you would like to offer advice, certainly message me. Just keep in mind I'm poor and don't have the money for filters or fancy plants, which is why I'm doing a closed system