Treatment Days 1-6

First week of the experiment!

Experiment checks

6/29/23:

• Julia, Lauren, and McCaela did ammonia checks. Drained 1/3 water in tanks with ammonia concentration > 1.0
• TTR and two crabs sampled from each tank
• Number of crabs in each tank after dissections
  • T1: 13
  • T2: 13
  • T3: 13
  • T4: 14
  • T5: 13
  • T6: 14
  • T7: 13
  • T8: 14
  • T9: 13
  • T10: 13
  • T11: 13
  • T12: 13
• Checked cold room temperatures. Things looked OK!
• Heat pump was reading at 75ºF, so I adjusted the flow of the 20ºC lines in the top tier to let the pump work more efficiently

6/30/23:

• Julia and Lauren did crab care today!
• Heater temperature: 76.1ºF
• Julia called and said that the chiller was reading at 49ºF (aka 10ºC). I said it may be because they added more freshwater to the water baths at the end of the day, and to check on the chiller temperature after work/tomorrow morning. The chiller was reading at 48.2 at 5 p.m.
• 4 escapees from tank 3

7/1/23:

• Julia
• Heater temperature: 76.ºF
  • Andria emailed saying there was more noise near our tanks and asking if we can minimize it. Unfortunately, the heater is the source of the noise
• Chiller temperature: 48.FºC
• Tank 3 escapee: 25-046
• Reglued velcro on tanks 9, 2, 8, 6, and 3
• Replaced mesh on tanks 3, 9, 11, and 4

7/2/23:

• Julia and Lauren
• Chiller temperature: 46.4ºF
• Heater temperature: 77.4ºF
• Ammonia check
  • T9: 8.0
  • T3: 4.0
  • T6: 8.0
  • T2: 8.0
  • T8: 4.0
  • T5: 8.0
  • T10: 2.0
  • T11: 2.0
  • T12: 1.0
  • T1: 0.25
  • T4: 0.25
  • T7: 0.25
• Replaced one power strip
• T9 mortality: 25-173
• Number of live crabs in each tank
  • T1: 13
  • T2: 13
  • T3: 13
  • T4: 14
  • T5: 13
  • T6: 14
  • T7: 13
  • T8: 14
  • T9: 12
  • T10: 13
  • T11: 13
  • T12: 13

7/3/23:

• Julia and Sarah
• TTR on all tanks
• Chiller temperature: 47.3ºF
• Heater temperature: 77ºF
• Lights were off because set up fell. Patched up duct tape but needs a permanent solution
• T12A and T7B stopped logging
• T6 mortality: 25-11
• Number of live crabs in each tank
  • T1: 13
  • T2: 13
  • T3: 13
  • T4: 14
  • T5: 13
  • T6: 13
  • T7: 13
  • T8: 14
  • T9: 12
  • T10: 13
  • T11: 13
  • T12: 13
• Rate limiting step of cleaning tanks is the tube diameter. Carolyn suggests a turkey baster.

7/4/23:

• I’M BACK!
• Checked ammonia in each tank. Did 1/3 water change, added ammonia conditioner, and replaced nitrogen filter
  • T9: 8.0
  • T3: 4.0
  • T6: 8.0
  • T2: 4.0
  • T8: 1.0
  • T5: 4.0
  • T10: 2.0
  • T11: 2.0
  • T12: 4.0
  • T1: 1.0
  • T4: 1.0
  • T7: 1.0
• T8: looked like there were eggs in the tank during the water clean
• T7: really murky, but all crabs alive
• No mortalities
  • T1: 13
  • T2: 13
  • T3: 13
  • T4: 14
  • T5: 13
  • T6: 13
  • T7: 13
  • T8: 14
  • T9: 12
  • T10: 13
  • T11: 13
  • T12: 13
• Tried fixing light set up…think we’ll need to zip tie some of the power strips.
• Replaced HOBOs T7B and T12A, and saved all HOBO data
• Cold room saga
  • 5ºC is actually 10ºC?! This doesn’t surprise me because the chiller has just not decided to work. I bailed out 1/2 bucket of fresh water from the large water baths, since I think the addition of extra water Thursday night in an attempt to stabilize tank temperature actually put way more water in than the chiller has the capacity to chill.
  • 10ºC IS 16-17ºC. I have no idea why this temperature is misbehaving, especially because my test tanks for 10ºC were perfect. I wonder if something also happened with the temperature of the cold box. I looked at the set point and adjusted it down to 10ºC, since Hadley gave me the OK to mess around in there (seems like they’re going to toss everything in there anyways)
  • I honestly think something happened with the cold room while I was gone because it’s not just the 5ºC that’s misbehaving
• Adjusted lights all the way down and turned off the other cold room lights to see if the really bright lights were modifying tank temperature
• 15ºC and 25ºC temperatures look excellent chef’s kiss
• Updated mortality spreadsheet
• Updated ammonia spreadsheet
• Updated TTR spreadsheet
• Labelled tubes
• Finalized respirometry chambers
  • Julia, Lauren, and McCaela did a great job covering the chambers in black trash bags and tape! However, they were unable to adhere the probe holders to the chambers, so I went ahead and did that.

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