20% Time Project- Journal #5

My tank is coming along nicely. It is a comfortable environment for my fish, who I am going to add shortly.

 The ghost shrimp need time to establish, and right now they are acclimating to the temperature. The daphnia eggs refuse to settle in the water. Hopefully this won't be an issue.

20% Time Project- Journal #4

The daphnia finally arrived. It's really weird and kind of gross. It comes with this funky packet of eggs

Which warns about triops, which are little shrimp-like things which will try to eat them. They come with a bowl to grow them in, but I decided to just put them into the tank and let them grow there. This will make it hard to remove triops if they emerge, but hopefully my shrimp or fish will eat them. 

20% Time Project- Journal #3

I bought all of my materials, and the total came to around $60. This is not an easy or cheap project, for anyone hoping to do the same! 

I bought a bunch of plants, and the things I need to set up the aquarium and promote algae growth. The petsmart didn't have any daphnia or microscopic organisms to establish the bottom layer of my food chain. I ordered them online, because petsmart only has the dead, freeze dried food version. The most time consuming part of this project was de chlorinating the water. It takes 7 drops of dechlorinator per 1/2 gallon of water, and my tank holds 2 gallons. I could only do a half gallon at a time, because I didn't have a container that could hold more while it was de chlorinating, and it takes 15 minutes to work. 

20% Time Project- Week 2

So this week, I figured out exactly what I'm going to need for my project and began to estimate the cost. Let me start out by saying that this is not going to be a cheap project. It won't break the bank, but it does require a decent amount of money to be spent in places like PetSmart.
The specific things that I'm going to be getting are:

National Geographic Aquarium Substrate- White Sand

Top Fin Premium Aquarium Gravel- River Rocks

Micro planarians or daphnia

water de-chlorinating drops

a fluorescent light

hair grass or corkscrew grass

lotus

moss ball

crystalwort

ghost or cherry shrimp

algae eating Plecostomus 

Tequila Sunrise Delta Guppies

20% Time Project Journal - Week 1

For my 20% time project, I have decided to make a self-sustaining aquarium, or aquatic ecosystem. This is somewhat like a terrarium, in which it is a sealed environment that provides itself all it needs. All that I would need to supply after making it would be sunlight. As is implied by the term "self-sustaining," this aquarium will have everything it needs to take care of itself. It is possible to buy one of these on amazon, and just observe it,  but I decided that I wanted to make my own. After researching I learned that this is what I will need.


Materials:
a large glass container
sand/rocks
algae and plants
a fluorescent fish lamp
snails
micro planarians or daphnia
ghost shrimp
guppies

Each of these things plays a part in keeping the aquarium self-sustaining. The plants oxygenate the water, and the herbivorous species on the bottom of the food chain eat the plants, keeping the growth in check. The guppies are at the top of the food chain in this scenario, eating both bits of the plants and the micro planarians and daphnia, and even the egg sacs of snails. Snails clean the tank, and the ghost shrimp keep the micro population under control. If I do this correctly, it should become a perfectly self-sustaining ecosystem that needs no influence from humans. After making the ecosystem, (it is a many step process, for each species to get established as a population before predation is introduced) I will observe it and monitor it until I am able to be sure that it can survive without me, at which point I will donate it to Jon Freer's future Environmental Science and Biology classes, so they can see and learn about self-sustaining ecosystems, and also have little fish friends.

Sources:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/smart-news/why-guppies-seem-to-have-a-death-wish-44001458/

http://www.amazon.com

http://wiseloris.hubpages.com/hub/sustainableaquarium

http://reefbuilders.com/2014/04/21/selfsustaining-ecosystems-box-close/

Winter Trimester Reflection

      I am very proud of my alternative energy video. I had a lot of trouble with WeVideo, so my partner and I made the executive decision that we would do it on iMovie, since we both had some experience using it. It turned out to be more difficult than I thought, first of all because there had just been an update released for Mac operating systems, which essentially changed everything we thought we were familiar with. So not only did I have to completely re-learn how to use the editing software, but, since we didn't know how to do voiceovers, I took the roundabout route, and decided that we could record ourselves on Garageband, make what were essentially songs containing our voiceovers, and then upload them to iTunes, from iTunes to iMovie, and then adjust the photos to fit the reflection. Precision editing the length of different photos was the hardest part. My partner had taken the Solebury video making class, so he had some camera/script experience and ideas that were helpful and fun, but I ended up doing the "post-production" part entirely on my own. I thought I could handle the editing, but kind of ended up overwhelming myself. All in all, though, I made it through, and think I made a pretty fun video, and learned a lot about Geothermal Energy–something I didn't even really know existed before this project.

Ultimately, I pretty much don't have much of a problem with any of my assignments. I kind of worked by my own schedule, which helped me understand them and do them the best that I could do. I really enjoyed the water fair project, but if I could have more time, I would like to re-do it with more time to really make it great, although I think we did a pretty fun project, and the results surprised me– Fiji water bottles have the most waste, despite appearing to be the smallest. I might go back and do the LOAEL Lab again, because I think that the substance we used (Ice Melter) was not the best for this project, as it was a solid, and the way we added it to the plant was by creating water concentrations, and frequently the dust from the crushed up Ice Melter would settle on the bottom of the container, separating from the water, and I was frequently afraid that the results wouldn't be accurate, since it wasn't very consistent. I also just have no memory of taking the measurements or even seeing the plants grow at all, but I had the data, so I know I did. I'd like to go back and try a different substance, and this time, remember our results.

     I really enjoyed any big projects that we did. The water fair, the LOAEL Lab, and the Energy video were all really fun changes of pace, and I think I came up with really nice, thoughtful projects, and actually learned a lot. I liked being able to work with new people, since I think a lot of the class only wants to partner up with whoever they sit with, but I like to change it up. I really like hands-on activities, so I think that things like this really help me learn better than just lecturing and taking notes, so a good balance of these things is perfect. I hope we do more stuff like that next trimester.

     I didn't like the Bioaccumulation post. I'm pretty good at math, so I thought it wouldn't be too hard for me, but something about it just didn't click. I spent a long time trying to figure it out, on multiple occasions, and just couldn't put it together, plus I didn't really like the results. It scares me thinking how many chemicals we ingest because we put them out there. I think, if we have things like that, maybe we could go over them in class more? A problem I might have had with it is that, my group for the LOAEL Lab was behind all the other groups, since we had to start over, so we were still working on that when everyone else broke off into groups to do bioaccumulation.

     Ultimately, I'm really glad that I took this class, because it is definitely teaching me a lot and changing my outlook on the environment and the world around me, and has inspired me to be a cleaner, greener person. Thanks Jon!

Future Energy