A Tentative Start

After many, many weeks of planning and waiting, my experiment is finally incredibly close to starting although I have technically already begun.

These last couple of weeks the tanks I am working with have been set up with ocean water running through them. Since then, the salinity levels have been brought up to 35ppt where they need to be and side projects have been done to determine that all the individual components work. UV lights have been tested and lights and light fixtures have been replaced and after brainstorming for about 3 weeks, the lights were finally put up today. There are 3 individual lamps over half of the twelve tanks hanging about a foot above the water. Soon, something will be put around the lights and the tanks so that no sunlight hits them and so none of the other tanks are affected by the UV of the tanks next to them.

A carbon dioxide tank has also been placed by the tanks and hooked up so that we can begin a steady stream of CO2 that will begin to acidify the water, changing the pH.

Very soon I will be able to put some tiles in these tanks and hope for the best in terms of algae growth but until then, Ali and I took the boats out to the middle of the ocean and dropped 8 tiles into the water in various positions so I can look at the algae that grows there, serving as a control of some sort. In two weeks I will go diving down to retrieve them (thanks my handy dandy scuba diving certification certificate that I got last month in Mexico!) and look at the results that I get from there.

Despite that fact that presentations are a about three weeks away, I'm hopeful I will be able to get some data that I can present or at the very least, share what I expect to see and what will be happening in the future.