As someone who keeps both fresh water and salt water aquariums, it makes perfect sense that this is completely plausible. I think most aquarist are well aware t

As someone who keeps both fresh water and salt water aquariums, it makes perfect sense that this is completely plausible. I think most aquarist are well aware that bacteria are the most powerful thing in keeping our aquarium ecosystems in balance. By mass, that vast majority of living material in that bottle is almost certainly bacteria, some nitrifying, others denitrifying. All otherwise decomposing, consuming, and recycling the various chemistry within. Think about the earth as a sealed globe within space, and you start to understand how good a job bacteria does at balancing the chemistry of life. I've actually seen something similar to this at a local museum called an "Ecosphere", which includes tiny shrimp living inside. They've been known to last for over ten years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosphere_(aquarium) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosphere_(aquarium) Carl Sagan's review of an Ecosphere: http://www.eco-sphere.com/sagan.html http://www.eco-sphere.com/sagan.html