The OA System is up and running!

Laura got everything up and running while I was a scientist in a classroom. I went out with her on February 22 to get oriented to our system. Today, I took Grace and Olivia out to Manchester to perform some routine maintenance and prepare them for when Laura and I are at NSA. Here’s what we did:

• Primed the pH, salinity, and temperature probes once we arrived
• Labelled bottles for water chemistry sampling. Because we were running short on bottles, we had two replicates for the low pH header and culture tanks, but just one replicate for the ambient header and culture tanks.
• Got water samples for chemistry analyses
• 1L grab samples: Took a 1L container, inverted it, and pushed it to the bottom of the tank. Flipped the container over and pulled it up to the top, collecting water as we brought it up.
• 250 mL bottle samples: For replicate 1, we sampled water from the bottom front of the tank. Replicate 2 was water from the top back of the tank. For the ambient tanks, we just had replicate 1.
• I taught Grace and Olivia how to measure pH, salinity, and temperature for our grab samples
• First, we prime the probe with the water we’re about to measure
• Then we place the probes deep enough into the 1L container. When all three values are relatively settled, we recorded the measurement
• We also recorded the start and end times for when we started discrete measurements and when we finished the last discrete sample measurement
• I left Olivia with the probes and taught Grace how to clean filters
• While she cleaned the filters, I removed all of the hoses from the culture tanks and prepared a bucket with warm bleach and freshwater to bleach the algal lines. I then ran bleach water through these lines, followed by just freshwater
• After I showed Grace what I set up with the algal lines, I had her finish out the discrete sample measurements and went to go poison samples with mercuric chloride with Olivia
• Once finished, I showed both of them how to create a standard curve for Tris base measurements

Everything went smoothly when we were there! When I got there, there was no more food in the algae tank. Jade refilled the tank once we cleaned out the algal lines.

Next week, I’ll have Grace and Olivia switch jobs so they know all aspects of maintenance they’ll be in charge of.