Brian P.

Journal

8-23-23

Today is the first day of WISRD, I feel excited and a little overwhelmed. I have an idea on what kind of lab I want to work on. But I’m still overwhelmed because there are multiple labs that seem really exiting to do. I just want to wait and see what I end up deciding in the future.

8-24-23

https://www.herox.com/blog/633-ten-awesome-water-purification-inventions

https://www.freshwatersystems.com/blogs/blog/what-is-ceramic-filtration-and-how-does-it-work

9-5-23

Today we checked up on the mushrooms Oli and I planted. We sprayed each mushroom 8 times besides the one we are not supposed to. After that we built a Brine Shrimp Hatchery where we are going yo hatch Brine Shrimp. Once we built that we placed salt water in it and made the water bubble up. Now we just need the heater to then add the Bine Shrimp.

9/7/2023

This class we got the heater for the brine shrimp tank. We set it to 85F (which is what brine shrimp hatch at ) and dumped in two scoops of brine shrimp eggs. Our mushrooms also grew a lot more. The one in the mushroom growing tank might be a little starved of oxygen. I wonder if thats why it is only growing one way. The one with no light has barely grown at all and the one in direct sunlight has not grown either. But the ones in shade are. When my micro greens and soil come I will cut off a piece of the mushrooms and put it in the dirt and see what happens. I really hope my fish come soon.

9-14-23

Today Oli and I found the almost all of our brine shrimp died. We think they died because there were too many of them and there was a bunch of junk at the bottom of the tank. We restarted the population with less shrimp and more water. Tomorrow the new fish come so the brine shrimp need to be ready to feed them. Oli and I have started a new project because we finished putting the mouse skeleton back together. So we started a new project where we will see how global warming effects mole crabs. How we will do this is by making small tanks and making each of them different temperatures to see if it affects how the sand crabs move around and how deep they tunnel. It won’t be very hot so they wont get hurt but it will be enough to cause some amount of change.

9-18-23

Today Oli and I did the same retrial by watering the mushrooms. We also received new fish for the fresh water tank. While Oli organized the inside the tank with all the green plants, I did a salinity test for both fresh and salt water tanks. The brine shrimp hatched and we were able to feed the fish. Something that we also noticed is that some brine shrimp died. The big question is why are they dying. The next steps are to plant the micro-greens, do research on why the brine shrimp are dying and our new project for the sand crabs.

10-2-2023

The past two weeks Oli and I have focused on our micro-greens and mushrooms that we planted. We have seen lot’s of progress with the our first planter. The mushroom has gotten bigger and it growing differently. Before with no light and water it would grow white and tall. But now with water and sunlight it is growing brown and in like a circular shape. Also the micro-greens have gotten very tall and soon some will go through the burlap.

10-10-2023

Today oli and I have seen that our second planter is not growing as fast as the first one. Another problem wis that the water source is not leaking as much water as it needs to therefore I think this is why our second planter is not growing as quick as our first one. Also, the bottle which is the water source, is not cut from the top like the other one which can also be another reason why the micro-greens are not growing as fast. Lastly, the second planter does not have mushrooms which could mean that is another reason why the micro-greens are not growing. If this is true, then this proves are scientific question which was how does mushrooms affect how plants grow? We also restarted the brine shrimp population since all of them died last week. We are still trying to figure out why they keep on dying.

Here are possible reasons:

1. To many brine shrimp

2. The fish food(stop feeding them that)

10/23/2023

Over the past 3 weeks we have done a few things. We have set up a mushroom grow tank and a tomato plant that we will add to once they are ready to be potted. We got a bunch of new fish and found out what type of food brine shrimps actually need to eat.

11-6-23

Today we are basically finishing off our first two projects and I will write what we achieved and how our experiments.

Fresh Water Tank:

Our goal for this tank was to create a self sustainable ecosystem. It almost there. We have about 20 fishes and they are all living together properly with no aggression. Something we have noticed is that there are 3 baby fish which is good because this shows that the fish are comfortable in their environment. One thing that we still have to do is set up a mechanism that releases brine shrimp into the tank at certain times. This idea was proposed and has not been done but our plan is to start working on it. We have also added brine shrimp eggs, 3 different types of plants and all the different fish. We specifically chose catfish, Orange CPO Dwarf Mexican Crayfish and 5 Red rili shrimp because they eat off the floor and can keep the tank clean. We also chose these other fishes because we wanted fish that were not aggressive with each other and not nocturnal. So overall, the fresh water tank has improved so much since the beginning of the year.

Types of creatures in the tank:

Lamb chop fish: 1

Glowlight Tetras: 3

Cory catfish: 2

Asian stone mini catfish: 2

Striped kuhli loach: 3

Red rili shrimp: 5

Sky blue endler's livebearer: 2

Lamb chop fish: 1

Types of plants in the fresh water tank:

Elodia: 12

Sword plants: 3

HORNWORT, DUCKWEED, AND JAVA MOSS

Mushrooms and plants:

In the beginning we had 4 mushrooms. We got a kit that came with oyster mushrooms that allowed us to grow them. We placed one in a sealed with no light in an inflatable mushroom container so it gets no light and oxygen. We place two mushroom in an area where light could hit them. We then put another mushroom in a box so it would get oxygen but not light. As time passed we noticed that the mushroom with no oxygen or light started to grow white. The mushrooms with oxygen and light did not grow at all. More time passed and we noticed that the mushroom with no oxygen and light started to grow or eat through the sponge we have placed. This led to a big question which was can mushrooms eat or grow through plastic. We then cut that white mushroom in half to place one into our planter with our micro-greens and the other half into that inflatable mushroom container with plastic just to see if mushroom can grow or eat through plastic. We put mushroom in some of our plants because for this project the goal was to see if mushrooms had an effect on plants and how fast they would grow. They all had the same amount of sun and water. We saw that the micro-greens that had the mushroom in it grew much bigger and faster than the one without it. We still cant be sure that that’s why they grew so much faster but, I think that is the case. When we took out the mushroom from the area where we were growing the micro-greens, the plant started to grow less and slower. We will continue to water them but that only takes 5 minutes which is why we need a new project to spend out time on.

1-2-24

Today Oli and I wanted to do more labs with mushrooms and plants. We decided to use different mushrooms so we got pearl oyster and pink oyster mushrooms. We been having the idea of cutting the mushroom blocks into smaller pieces, so we did. We cut the mushrooms into smaller pieces and then put both types of mushroom into separate boxes. We also gathered mushroom juice from the pink oyster mushroom.

Philodendron