Changes in our eco-column over 3 weeks

Over the next three weeks our eco-column will be put to the real test of survival, with no human interaction and varied outside conditions which will affect the inner state of the eco-column. In this post I shall be explaining what I think will happen over the next three weeks, while us humans are enjoying ourselves, basically putting together a hypothesis for what will happen over the next three weeks.

The Holidays

• During week one our eco-column will be busy adapting to a world with no human interaction, hints the word "sustainable".

All of the living organisms that are left alive in the eco-column will also be strained over the next period of three weeks, most of our mosquito larvae will have hatched by then and would have been released.

The Eco column will busy be adapting to its new world, so therefore most of the Eco column will be strained through this period, but will survive and produce some interesting results when we get back.

The terra zone as you can see has not produced much growth and has not yet reached the half way mark, but is still lagging behind at the quarter mark.

The Decomp zone although a bad picture, has retained little moisture and has life forms, we are hoping that these life forms will multiply over the holidays.

The Insect zone has little plants and has little insects as well, hopefully by the end of the holidays there be a sufficient improvement.

The Aqua zone, has microscopic life forms in it and the colour is holding steady at a darkish brown colour.

(The information displayed below is the result after the holidays and reflects on the Eco columns progress.)

Most of our predictions were correct in thinking that the Eco column will improve in some areas and not so much in other areas.

• Our Eco column has survived the holidays and most of it is still "alive".
• The mosquito larvae that were present in the aqua zone before the holidays have seemed to be gone and most of the other life forms in the aqua zone is gone.
• The Eco column has improved in overall quality since we left it and is thriving.
• There are microscopic organisms in the Aqua zone, which were there before the holidays but have increased in overall population, at least doubling, this was not one of our predictions.

Here are some pictures, kindly taken by Boyd while i was overseas, these are in ascending order.

The plants have shown major growth since the last time we analysed them and the are facing towards the sun which is a good sign and they are a darker green than before the holidays which means that the plants are much healthier and are thriving in a successful manor. 

The separator is looking pretty lifeless and the seeds which we placed in this "zone" are seen to be dried up and therefore the separator zone is inhabitable.

The insect zone looks pretty much the same, the life that once inhabited this zone (plants)  is seen to have died out and dried up, which is not all bad because it turned into a bit of compost. and the leaves and twigs are starting finally to decompose.

The decomp zone still holds life, our slugs which were placed in the decamp zone are still alive and microscopic life is thriving, the zone has retained some moisture which is a good sign.

The aqua zone has remained the same colour and the water level has not increased or decreased.

Jaime

By Jaime

Reflection on the terms work

This post will show how we have worked together,who did what and was the Eco-column a success or not 

first I will inform u about our Eco-column 

Our Eco column is a great success because our Terra layer is still growing and is condensation which means our Terra layer is functioning with ease. The decomp layer is still functioning, the insects are still living well they have a substantial amount of food. 
I have a better understanding of how an eco column works and what an eco column is
i think our group worked very well together it didnt show everything we lerndt but we all did our part 

Richard Schwulst


I think our EcoColumn was a partial success as the zones were reacting with themselves but not each other, as is seen in the Aqua layer having the same amount of water 3 months ago.
I have a better understanding of how connected an ecology has to be to work efficiently.
Our group worked well but thats not to say everything was perfect, and the blog doesn't show how much we learnt but does show parts of it.

boyd




Please note that Jaime was absent and so unable to complete his portion of this post. We have tried to contact him.

Eco Column as an Ecosystem

This post is an overview of our EcoColumn and an evaluation of whether it was/is an ecosystem.

An ecosystem is a defined area that is self maintaining, which includes all the different living organisms in that area. These organisms interact with each other and the abiotic components. That is the textbook definition of an ecosystem; our EcoColumn is:

• self-maintaining
• including all the living organisms in the EcoColumn
• interacting with the EcoColumn's abiotic factors and biotic factors

Although, there is little reaction between the zones.

Here are photos of the ecosystem.

Our Terra Zone, which is growing very well from the seeds which we planted at the beginning. Not as visible here, is that the plants are all facing towards the window, therefor the sun, with at least a few leaves.

The splitter between our Terra (Above) and Insect zones. The seeds which we planted have died out because of a lack of soil and maybe water.

Our Insect zone, I cannot see much difference from before the holidays

The Decomp zone, there are decomposers at work here, but too small to bee seen clearly without help.

Finally, our Aqua zone, as you can see, the water level has not changed (marked by duct tape). I looked at the water under a microscope and saw that there were numerous creatures, but I couldn't get a clear picture

From this I conclude that the EcoColumn is almost and ecosystem as the different zones were interacting with themselves but not each other.

b

Observations and changes in the biotic components. By Jaime Garlick

In this post I shall be mentioning all of the observations and biotic components which have taken place in our eco-column.
But firstly a quick update, our eco-column is going steady and our three slugs are still alive and slugging. Our plants are still growing and are climbing up towards the sun. In our aqua zone there are little living organisms that are swimming around, I think most of them are mosquito larvae and I don't know what all of he other little things are.

1.water temperature-24 degrees

2.room temperature-24 degrees

3.plant growth-steady and slowly increasing by 1 or 2 centimetres a week
4.leaf colour-light/semi-dark green
5.ph level- blue colour, which indicates a base acidity
6.height of pants-6-9cm
7.number of plants-24 plants

    Above: A picture of our aqua zone with the mosquito larvae alive in our aqua zone and the other living organisms, which looks like a round black ball, which is featured in one of the videos below.

                                   Above: A picture of the terra zone with its plants that germinated last week, which are leaning towards the sun against the window and are striving for light to for photosynthisis to take place.

                                  Above: A picture of the decomp zone with its slugs in it and the roots growing down the bottle neck and with a lot of foliage in the bottom of the decomp zone and a lot of sticks and leaves and also plants which are lying along the top of the decomp zone.

A video of of the plants in the terra zone.

A video of the decomp zone below.

A video of the Aqua zone.

Who did What

Here is a list of who did what, please not that Richard is not here at the lesson where I am writing this post so I am not 100% sure exactly what he did.

Boyd

• Wrote some posts 
• Taking information from the EcoColumn
• Checking the water levels
• Building the EcoColumn
• Stocking the EcoColumn

Jaime

• Wrote some posts
• Stocked the EcoColumn
• Helped seed the plants
• Recorded the information
• collected information from the Eco-column.
• took care of living organisms.(slugs, mosquitos)

Richard

• Wrote some posts
• Stocked the EcoColumn
• Helped seed the plants
• Helped record information

Written by boyd

Data collection of Aboitic components by Richard Schwulst

HEY EVERYBODY
I am going to show you the temperature of the aqua layer, the room temperature, and the PH of the water on several dates:

	28 Feb	1 march	04 Mar
room temp	24	23	22
soil temp (terra)	21	23	21
water temp	21	21	23
pH	alkaline	alkaline	Acidic
water level increase/decrease	NA	same	same
general status	good	good	good
water status	good	good same colour	good, algae
plant status	very good growth	good	good
overflow level	0cm	0 CM	0 cm
leaves	14	18	20
Terra condensation	lots of mist	minimal	minimal
Aqua condensation	Lots of big droplets	same as last time lots of big droplets	same as last time lots of big droplets

Update-Observing our ecocolumns biotic factors under a light and dissecting microscope - boyd kane

Hey Everybody,

Zoomed in

A Something found in our aqua layer

In this post I am going to try view some of our biotic factors under the light microscope. This is the update of the first version of this post.
After seeing that one of the plants in our terra layer was decomposing, I took it out and had a look at it under the strong dissecting microscope. This is a photo of the leaf with fungal hyphae (thin white strands) and the small black dots are the fungal spores, which are sending out the fungal hyphae. also not clear in this picture is a small insect in the top left quarter is a small creamy white larvae which is eating the fungal hyphae. I am going to put the decomposing leaf in the decomp layer.

I looked on google and I couldn't find anything that looked like the creature in the pictures above, but I do not think that it is any form of algae as it isn't green from chlorophyll, so it could possible be just some dirt. Here are some URLs of the places I looked:
http://www.lenntech.com/eutrophication-water-bodies/algae.htm
http://science.jrank.org/pages/205/Algae.html
http://botany.si.edu/projects/algae/classification.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae

More posts to follow

boyd

Update-1st of March

Hello this is just a quick update, we have measured a couple of things in our eco-column and observed some amazing things as well. firstly in the beggining of our stocking of our eco-column we had one slug, Geoff, and lately we have noticed that now have four slugs now so that is pretty cool, also we have named them.
1.Geoff
2.Boydes
3.Schwuzle
4.Garlichi
So thats pretty cool, we have also noticed that our plants, which wree planted from seeds have grown into nice, big plants and the interesting thing is that they are leaning towards the window reching for sun, which is pretty cool. We have measured a couple more things, which i will mention now. Most of our mosquito lavae have hatched and have escaped somehow but we still have a couple of little lavae left in our aquazone. I have noticed that there are not just mosquito lavae but there are little round things thats swim away if you go near them....

The things we have measured are:

Room temp: 23 degrees celsius.
Soil temp: 23 degrees celsius.
Water temperature: 21 degrees celcius.
pH level: alkaline.
Water level: same.
General status: good.
Water status: good same colour.
Plant status: good.
Overflow level: 0 cm
Leaves: 18 leaves
Terra condensation: minimal.
Aqua condensation: same as last time, big droplets.

Written By: Jaime Garlick

project update-plant growth

Good morning children it is Richard Schwulst back from cricket tour. This is an update on our insct project 

We planted some seeds and they germinated and the longest is about 7 cm in the Terra layer and  a few in the decomposing layer we noticed that our slugs are still living. There is less Mosquito  larvae so we think that they have  hatched

.

Here are some of the stats we have gathered (degrees C )

• room temp -24 
• soil temp(Terra)-21 
• water temp-21
• PH level- 10 
• general status- good 
• water status- good
• plant status- very good
• overflow level- 0 cm 
• leaves-14 
• Terra condensation- average and lots of mist 
• aqua condensation- large amount of droplets 

That is it for now 

Richard Schwulst 

Eco-column update

This is just a quick update from last week:

the Eco-column is going steady producing a lot of water vapor in the Terra and aqua zones, our slug is still alive and we are treating it ethically, we have many mosquito lave swimming around in the aqua zone and the current classroom temperature today is about 25* degrees.

 One of the mosquito lave have hatched and is flying around the aqua zone. the seeds that we planted in the decomp zone have sprouted and are well on there way to becoming healthy plants, they have been provided with water (vapor). the seeds and all living organisms have been provided with plenty of sunlight so far, because i seeds have sprouted and all of our animals are still alive and well, our living organisms have been supplemented with plenty of food as well.

we have planted more seeds this week and hopefully they will germinate next week.

 i am signing off now.

21/02/2012

Jaime Garlick

Annotated Drawing

Hello,

This is the annotated drawing of what our plans are for the INSCT, it includes the design of the EcoColumn and the general who eats who.
Fearing that I wouldn't be able to fit all that I needed to onto the EcoColumn, we scanned the drawing in and we have annotated in the text below.

The Planned Design

Various Organisms and their Food Source/s

(All organisms are in the plural, regardless)

Slugs à waste

Worms à waste

Spiders  à insects

Caterpillars  à leaves

(Butterfly à flowers)

Coriander à energy from sun and soil

Small decomposing beetles à waste

Mosquito larvae à algae

Other water dwelling larvae à algae

The Zones And Their Abiotic/Biotic Factors

Terra:

Coriander

Various small beetles

Worms

Coke bottle walls

Earth

Wind

Water

Mini-Terra:

Coriander

Various small beetles

Worms

Earth

Wind

Coke bottle walls

Water

Insect:

Caterpillar

Coriander

Worms

Various small beetles

A Spider

Various leaves

Slugs

Possibly other insects

Sticks

Earth

Wind

Coke bottle walls

Water

Decomp

Coriander

Worms

Various small beetles

Leaves

Rotting Fruit

Slugs

Sticks

Earth

Coke bottle walls

Water

Main Aqua

Mosquito larvae 

Other larvae

algae

Earth

Coke bottle walls

Water

A Stone

Many Thanks,

Our Team

Brought the INSCT to school

Hello,

Today we brought the INSCT to school, and after setting it up and tidying it up, we went around looking for insects ( to Richard's delight). HE had a close encounter with a small, unco-operative wasp, but the ants were more achievable for us all, and we ended up snagging a spider as well, so a very productive hunt in the end.

Also today, I headed off to zeekoevlie (I'm sure thats the wrong spelling) and bagged a bottle of water from there, and got a little water boatman with it. The photos are being stubborn so I'll try to upload them tomorrow 

b

The Build 2

Ok this is the build post No. 2 with the rest of the pics:

The finished framework

A slightly better pic of the framework

The bottles stacked and ready to go

Absolutely essential in this heat (:

Bottles with the framework cropped to size

the different zones

b

The Build

Hey, on the weekend I basically finished putting the bottles together, I've got quite a few pics so I'm not going to put them all up on this one post because I think the blog won't let me put so many on in one post.

Cutting the bottle top off to make way for the others

A very confusing diagram to follow

Trying to make sense of it all

The top portion (I worked from top to bottom)
In this you can see the Terra and the small Aqua

the 'valve' between the insect zone and the decomp zone

The completed column on its side



b

Update

Hey people, today I finally managed to collect what I think will be the last coke bottle needed for our project (:  After looking at the design, I think we need four bottles and something for the overflow dish, but I'm not sure, so will keep collecting.

say hello for me

b

The Finished Sketch

OK, hello everybody, I've pretty much finished the basic sketch of the EcoColumn, and only need to annotate in and it'll be done, I'll attach a photo of it.
We didn't have Bio today so haven't planned anything new as far as getting everything sorted goes.
about the comments, please feel free to leave one, their free and you only need a Google account to leave one(so that's a Gmail, Google+ and some others for those who don't know). So please let us know what you think and I'll get back to you.


b

Here's the finished drawing(without annotations):

Not very big, but that's still to come

The first day

Today we started with our plans for the EcoColumn which we have christened INSCT.
It originally was meant to be an acronym, but that boiled down into INSCT being better than the acronym, and it stuck.
The pictures that follow if I can get them to load up are of our original designs and a few just for fun.
Richard, being away on Cricket Tour has managed to dodge the first period but he's coming back on Tuesday ( tomorrow ) , so he wont miss that much.

So excited

b

The first post.

boyd's initial sketch.

The same initial sketch.

boyd

Jaime

The finished rough sketch (:

Success!!