No More Spinach

This week we decided that the Attriplex hortensis have grown enough and that the experiment can be terminated and analyzed. Desiree and I unrooted all the plants and dried them out in an oven (to constant weight.) We then took the dry weight of all the plants so that we can compare the treatment growths. Just from speculation, the RO concentrate and RO concentrate + aquaculture grew quite a bit more than the freshwater treatment. But statistical test will have to be done to determine if the growth differences are significant. We also took some soil samples of each treatment for possible soil analysis.

Four tanks have been set up at the lab (one 20 ppt sea salt water tank, a 3 ppt sea salt water tank, a RO tank, and a Vsep tank.) The tanks were decided to be used for a bio-analysis for baby Talapia. So we have put 5 Talapia into each tank to see how well they do in the water treatments. -After one day, one small fish died in the Vsep tank, but other than that, the fish seem to all be fine.

Also throughout this week, I have been doing test on the water samples of tanks. Things such as nitrite, ammonia, PH, and electrical conductivity have been tested in the shrimp and fish tanks. When we did the electrical conductivity test on the Vsep water, we actually found out that the run-off is more around 10ppt instead of 20ppt (don't trust engineers to calculate salinities.) But we can just change the 20ppt tank and dilute it to a 10ppt tank so it's not a big deal. We will also later be doing some test on dissolved oxygen within the waters; also the sunlight percent passed through the greenhouse.

As for the shrimp, the shrimp seem to be doing fine and I have been feeding them regularly. So far things have been going well, and it is nice to see some of the projects start to wine down.