Sailfin Mollies

Much progress has been made this week. As usual, I have been regularly feeding the fish and shrimp, and watering the plants in the greenhouse. This week we decided to terminate the shrimp bio-assay in the lab, and the whole main shrimp experiment within the lab. So we took all the shrimp out of their tanks and weighed, measured, and counted them. Data wise, we will be concentrating on the growth of the shrimps and survival rates of the shrimp within the tank treatments. The data has yet to be analyzed, but just from eye-balling it, the shrimp grew the most and survived the most in the 20 ppt artificial sea salt water, followed by the 3 ppt artificial sea salt water, and then the RO concentrate water (in which a lot less survived.)

In place of the Pacific White Shrimp, we did a short term bio-assay with Sailfin Mollies in 10 ppt artificial sea salt water, 3 ppt artificial sea salt water, RO concentrate, and Vsep brine. After 94 hours, none of the Mollies died in the tanks. So we got 47 more Sailfin Mollies and set them up in the old shrimp tanks (and replacing the 20 ppt artificial sea salt water with freshwater.) We also took note of the weight, full length (as apposed to standard), and sex of the Mollies for a growth comparison between treatments, and possibly a reproduction comparison. Due to the projects almost being over, the Molly data will most likely not be within my paper, but it will be interesting data.

In addition to setting up the Molly experiment, this week we've also grinded up the dry samples of the Attriplex hortensis which will be sent to a lab and analyzed to see if it is safe to eat. If everything turns out to be ok, then the water plant at Marana can start using their RO waste water to grow both fish and halophytes; which would give them two crops to raise using the waste water, as opposed to just dumping it and wasting it.