A Trip to the Aquarium

This week was all about aquaria in the lab, as I put together all the specifications for my experimental setup. Unlike many of my peers, I have no experience working with aquaria, and very little understanding regarding the materials required for their setup and maintenance. Thankfully my friends have been very helpful with suggestions and problem-solving. While the aquarium that I am using, pictured here, is smaller than the one I originally planned for, it is a much more manageable size in the environmental chamber. This monster is a 40 gallon aquarium, which I have fitted with multiple air stones, a pump, and a temperature control, to maintain the environment as close to the St. Andrew Bay conditions as possible. In the image you can also see my first test mesocosm (small environmental chamber) sitting nicely at the bottom of the tank. The mesocosms for this experiment are mostly sediment with a small amount of seawater, microplastics, and luminophores depending on the treatment that I am using.

I will be going out into the field on Monday to collect some sediment for a pilot experiment. While I am confident in the setup for one chamber, I need to make sure that this setup is viable for multiple chambers and that I can track the luminophores in the St. Andrew Bay sediments. The sediments out in the bay are a bit muddier (finer grained) than the ones I've been using at the Marine Lab, which is why a pilot experiment is important. The pilot also allows me to practice the experiment before the more important experiment and work out any technical issues or equipment errors now.

While I will be getting all the materials for the experiment next week, the real start date won't be for an additional week, as I need to give the sediments and animals time to settle into their new environment. The car ride from the field site back to the lab is bound to jostle the mud around and the organisms will need to acclimate to the lab and find their way back to their place in the mud column. This will give me time to stain the extra sediments to make luminophores and work on some additional side projects too. Stay tuned for next week's update on this exciting pilot experiment.

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