Treatment Days 21-22

7/19/23:

• Ammonia tests in tanks 1-9. Replaced 60% of water in tanks 1-12 and added ammonia conditioner to tanks 1-9 when ammonia > 1.0, and to tanks 10-12. Replaced all nitrogen filters.
  • T1: 0.5
  • T2: 2
  • T3: 2
  • T4: 0.5
  • T5: 2
  • T6: 8
  • T7: 0.25
  • T8: 4
  • T9: 8
• No mortalities!
  • T1: 11
  • T2: 11
  • T3: 11
  • T4: 12
  • T5: 10
  • T6: 9
  • T7: 11
  • T8: 11
  • T9: 10
  • T10: 12
  • T11: 10
  • T12: 11
• Fed 10ºC and 25ºC tanks
• TTR for 5ºC and 15ºC tanks
  • Tank order: 1, 4, 7, 2, 8, 5
  • Stopwatch stopped working (start/stop button not functioning). Used phone instead
  • Fed 15ºC tanks after TTR
• Respirometry for 5ºC tanks
  • Tank order: 1, 4, 7
  • Turned the individual chillers off to stop water flow and not disturb the probes. I ended up turning the chillers back on during T7 since Dion told me that the room was warming up again, and it didn’t disturb the probes. The probes were finnicky today (especially probe 4) and weren’t all the way in their fittings. Making sure the probes were slightly sticking out of the fitting, and then putting that fitting into the holder on the chamber ensured good readings. A warning that the probe isn’t fit well is when the readings are “jagged” or when the probes take forever to calibrate.
  • Fed 5ºC tanks after respirometry
  • Salinity values for respirometry (that I completely forgot I needed to start taking)
    • T1: 36
    • T4: 36
    • T7: 35
• Got HOBO data
  • Low battery warnings from T9A, T1A, T1B, T4B
• Cold room update
  • FINALLY Checked the HOBO data from last Friday, and it seems like the additional chillers brought the temperature down to 5ºC before the cold room was fixed. I contemplated raising the temperature in the room, but with the fan situation I’d rather keep as many failsafes as possible.
  • Which is the correct choice because the cold room fan still failing. Dion from Facilities came and turned it off to defrost again. He said they need to order a new part, but in the mean time they’ll periodically turn off the fan so the ice in the back can defrost and the fan can function.
• Updated TTR spreadsheet
• Updates survivorship spreadsheet
• Updated ammonia spreadsheet
• Helped Lauren set up HOBO loggers and epoxy probe fittings to the back of her crabs for her salinity experiment. Replaced a bunch of batteries in HOBO loggers.

Figure 1-2. Spike in cold room temperature from one HOBO logger.

7/20/23:

• Quick vacuum
• One mortality in T9 (25-166). Rinsed the filter from T9 since it was replaced yesterday and had a bit of hepatopancreas on it (lovely).
  • T1: 11
  • T2: 11
  • T3: 11
  • T4: 12
  • T5: 10
  • T6: 9
  • T7: 11
  • T8: 11
  • T9: 9
  • T10: 12
  • T11: 10
  • T12: 11
• Fed 5ºC and 10ºC tanks
• TTR for 25ºC tanks
• Respirometry for 15ºC tanks
  • Tank order: 8, 2, 5
  • Started with T2, but 10 minutes in the program kept throwing up an error that the USB device was not connected. I used the micro USB-B from my headphones to connect the probe box to the computer and it worked! We put the T2 crabs back in their tank to recover and did T8 respirometry instead
  • Salinity values for respirometry
    • T8: 35
    • T2: 35
    • T5: 35
• Went to Redfield for ~4 hours to help Lauren with heart rate for her salinity experiment.
• Respirometry for 25ºC tanks
  • Tank order: 6, 3, 9
  • Salinity values for respirometry
    • T6: 32
    • T3: 32
    • T9: 32
    • Not sure why the 25ºC water has a lower salinity than the other tanks. May have something to do with the heat pump collecting salt?
• Sarah labelled all tubes for Monday’s dissections and cut trash bags to use for dissection stations.
• Cold room update
  • Checked the HOBO loggers during when the chillers were off and the room was starting to warm. The chillers were turned back on at the end of T7 respirometry and temperatures quickly returned to their normal range.
    • Maximum temperatures yesterday
      • T1: 5.8ºC
      • T4: 6.3ºC
      • T7: 6.5ºC
  • The fan will be turned off for 10 mintues at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. to ensure proper defrosting and cold room function. This shouldn’t interrupt my temperatures at all!

Figures 3-5. Cold room tank temperature data for one logger per tank

Going forward

1. Continue doing daily checks and with experimental time points
2. Assist Lauren and Julia with experiments
3. Test formatting and analysis for one set of respirometry data
4. Respirometry analysis
5. Update methods
6. Update results