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