Spinach and shrimp

This week consisted much of setting up fish tanks, and officially starting the Atriplex hortensis (French spinach if you want it to sound more appealing) experiment. Starting with the Atriplex hortensis, this week I've transplanted the germinated seedlings into bigger pots and have randomly assigned them to watering treatments. Having twelve plants for each treatment, we have one group being watered with freshwater, one group watered with the reverse osmosis waste water, and one group being watered with reverse osmosis waste water with fish growing in the tank (which adds some nutrients to the water from the fish waste.) One of the shop boys down at the Environmental Research Lab also moved a giant tank of reverse osmosis waste water into the greenhouse for us so that it will be easier accessed. (Also the tractor got stuck in the greenhouse, which resulted in a even bigger tractor to come in a dislodge it from the ground -which was fun to watch.) And today we've officially started watering the Atriplex hortensis with their selected treatments.

Also this week, we've been working on setting up fish tanks for the Litopenaeus vannamei (Pacific white shrimp) experiment. So far we have nine tanks set up: 3 with Vsep waste water, 3 with RO waste water, and 3 with 20ppt sea salt water. Filters have been made and set-up for every tank, and we've begun to acclimate the fish tanks by adding fish in them (which builds up ammonia for the bacteria to start growing). As of now, we just need to calibrate all the water heaters to the same temperature, and further test the filters to see if they are completely ready. Hopefully next week, we'll have shrimp swimming all in the tanks.