Making it even colder

On Tuesday I turned down the temperature of the cold box to 0ºC. Today I checked the temperatures of the tanks to see if that helped at all.

Figures 1-2. Temperature of the room. Middle rack where 0ºC are (top) and bottom rack where there are no tanks (bottom)

Comparing the room temperature on the middle and bottom racks, I think the difference in temperature isn’t because the bottom rack is colder, but because the lights aren’t on for those racks. Which reminds me, I should reach out to Phil about getting all the rack lights fixed and fully lit.

Figures 3-6. Temperature of 0ºC tanks

Making the room colder does help maintain the 0ºC at ~0.5ºC instead of ~0.8ºC! So that’s a very nice development. I’m hesitant to bump the cold room any colder at this point.

Figures 7-10. Temperature of 5ºC tanks

And the tanks at 5ºC are staying around 5ºC! Once I know exactly where I’ll keep the tanks, it’ll be easier to mess with the different temperature control boxes and get them all around the same desired temperature. It also didn’t help that one of the immersion heaters got unstuck and the temperature in tat tank probably wasn’t circulating as well.

In any case, things look good and I think I’m ready to start setting up the cold room for crab acclimation!

Going forward

1. Purchase experimental materials
2. Set up cold room
3. Obtain MA crabs!
4. Identify candidate restriction enzymes for new primers
5. Tailor PCR protocol for new primers
6. Develop restriction band digest for genotyping
7. Develop heart rate protocol