S'jarith

S'jarith is an educational technology akin to the concept of a child's ant-farm in human society. However, it's considerably more nuanced. The purpose of S'jarith is to teach young szassar the basics of biotechnology. A s'jarith wall or tank is a fairly standard feature of the homes of most szass. The duty of maintaining the s'jarith is handed off from young szassar adults to the children in clan group over the years between the fifth and tenth hatchdays of the child.
  A domestic s'jarith will often occupy several square metres of wall and/or floor space. Educational spaces will also generally have their own s'jariths, as will many workplace environments. However, the task of maintaining a s'jarith is typically assigned in the home. Workplace s'jariths are usually managed by third parties; and educational s'jariths are more often specifically cultivated by advanced students or staff to investigate a specific set of inputs and outcomes. 
  A s'jarith is essentially a food-plot in which those responsible for its health and productivity go through a period of immersive learning in how to plan, manage and optimise its operation. A s'jarith isn't necessarily limited to a single species of food sources. In fact, it's generally a self-contained ecosystem containing a variety of plant, fungus, insect and micro-herpetid species. During the handover period, the young adults hand over their own insights into the operation  of the s'jarith, which improves their own understanding of the various life-cycles, nutrient exchanges and environmental requirements of the s'jarith, which in turn provides a significant percentage of the nutrients consumed by the clan-group they belong to. 
  As younger szassar take on more responsibility, they are encouraged to start implementing improvements of their own to the s'jarith, and experimenting with changes to the mix of nutrients, species and resources used to keep the s'jarith ticking over. Included in this form of experimentation is the isolation of segments of the s'jarith for controlled tinkering so that the rest of the facility operates normally and the clan group's food supply is not significantly impacted by the outcomes of a bad idea. Nobody gets cross at the children responsible for making bad decisions. However, they are asked to think carefully about what went wrong and report that back to the teens who are teaching them the s'jarith management process.
  The other purpose of the s'jarith is to teach youngsters about the medicinal uses of the species they oversee and the means to optimise medicinal output. As szassar medicine is heavily based in biotechnology and nanotechnology, this results in szassar children coming into adulthood with a strong degree of informal knowledge in these fields.
  A typical s'jarith consists of multiple micro-biomes which support a specific group of species. These species are most often endemic to the region in which the s'jarith is maintained, but in more barren regions (e.g. polar climates) it's not unusual to find imported foodstock species. Such s'jarith also generally require temperature control capabilities as well, which is why endemic species are more often used. Most s'jarith will also have multiple viewports which allow residents (and especially children) to view the biome in action and get a clearer understanding of the processes taking place within it. Thus the s'jarith is a form of educational entertainment, biological research and agricultural facility.