AnimalsActually, which you choose first, a container or a creature depends on what you value.
If you are just raising one Freshwater shrimp, a small 180 ml bottle of whiskey will be enough if you do it well.
For one scallop, a smaller bottle like a medicine bottle may be enough.
However, if you are raising multiple shrimp and aiming for a generational change, you will need a much larger container.
In my experience, only containers of 2 liters or more have been successful in raising Freshwater shrimp for a generational change.
For fish, an even larger container is needed.
In my experience, I have succeeded in keeping a Japanese killifish alive for a little over a year in an 8 liter plum wine bottle, but I think it is probably impossible to raise a fish for a generational change in the size of containers generally sold.
In any case, the creatures you can keep depend on the container.
If you have already decided what creatures you want to keep in your Mini-Earth, you must choose a container of the appropriate size from the beginning.
However, you cannot easily get such good and tough creatures that can be kept in the extreme environment of a Mini-Earth.
Of course, it's a different story if you put in daphnia or microorganisms smaller than that.
Shrimps that you can buy at an aquarium shop or a DIY shop are the Japanese or Yamato shrimp.
However, Yamato shrimp cannot reproduce unless you switch to brackish water, so if you are aiming for a change of generations, the Japanese shrimp is the basic choice.
When it comes to keeping fish, even in an 8-liter plum wine bottle, the size of the killifish or red-fin seems to be the limit.
If you can completely control the temperature of your Mini-Earth, guppies would be an option.
For shellfish, I recommend the red ram's horn.
It is as easy to change generations as shrimp.
An even easier option is the scallop, but it is not likely to be in shops as people don’t so like it.
The stag beetle is larger than the red ramshorn snail, so it is more difficult to change generations.
It would be interesting to try putting bivalve clams in addition to the snails.
They can live a long time, but breeding will be difficult.
It is said that breeding bivalve clams is difficult not only in Mini-Earth, but also in normal breeding.
In addition to the creatures introduced here, it should be possible to put creatures with similar capabilities into Mini-Earth.
Readers who are good at collecting creatures in the wild should definitely try new creatures.
You can also get other creatures from specialized aquarium shops or online.
The one I would like to recommend is amphipods.
There are many kinds of amphipods, and they are known as they play an important role as decomposers in the natural world.
We can expect them to play a similar role on Mini-Earth, and they are much smaller than Japanese freshwater shrimp, and I think they are the creatures with the easiest generational succession, except for daphnia.
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