West Coast Green Crab Experiment Part 6

Acclimation Day 4 and 5

The past few days were spent wrapping up the acclimation period for the crabs.

Experiment checks

6/27/23:

  • Julia, Lauren, and Sarah did ammonia checks. Drained 1/3 water in tanks with ammonia concentration > 1.0
    • T1: 2.0
    • T2: 3.0
    • T3: 2.0
    • T4: 3.0
    • T5: 2.0
    • T6: 2.0
    • T7: 3.0
    • T8: 3.0
    • T9: 2.0
    • T10: 2.0
    • T11: 4.0
    • T12: 3.0
  • Julia, Lauren, and Sarah added 1/4 tsp food to tall tanks and touched up super glue on velcro for T10
  • T7B HOBO dead, T12A HOBO relaunched
  • Moved 1 M crab from T9 to T7, and another M crab from T11 to T10. No mortalities!
  • Number of crabs in each tank after moving things around
    • T1: 17
    • T2: 17
    • T3: 17
    • T4: 18
    • T5: 17
    • T6: 18
    • T7: 17
    • T8: 18
    • T9: 17
    • T10: 17
    • T11: 17
    • T12: 17
  • Updated survivorship Google Sheet with today’s counts and revised previous counts for T7, T9, T10, and T11
  • Checked cold room temperatures
  • Came up with sampling plan
  • Labelled RNA and metabolomics tubes for end of acclimation sampling

6/28/23:

  • Checked cold room tanks and they were at ~6ºC! I think this is good enough for the experiment.
  • Took TTR and dissected two crabs from each tank
    • I misread my protocol and accidentally used a 1 minute acclimation time between trials instead of a 10 s acclimation time! I figured this out after six tanks, but at least I figured it out.
  • Number of crabs in each tank after dissections
    • T1: 15
    • T2: 15
    • T3: 15
    • T4: 16
    • T5: 15
    • T6: 16
    • T7: 15
    • T8: 16
    • T9: 15
    • T10: 15
    • T11: 15
    • T12: 15
  • Moved all crabs to their treatment temperatures.
    • …which was chaotic. A bunch of fuses went out on the back wall of the cold room. Turns out all the circuits are grounded on one GFI, and there was too much humidity in the room which means the outlets tripped! We were able to fix this buy plugging the chiller in outside of the cold room so it wasn’t on the same circuit as everything else.
    • After many hours and help from Carolyn, McCaela, Lauren, and Julia, we got everything squared away and set up! Now to hope it holds…

Going forward

  1. Continue doing daily checks and with experimental time points
  2. Test formatting and analysis for one set of respirometry data
  3. Respirometry analysis
  4. Update methods
  5. Update results
  6. Cover respirometry chambers with black trash bags and duct tape, and add the probe holders with silicone glue
Written on June 28, 2023