MAKE: Noise — Discuss this article

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• A message in a bottle ...
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  My biosphere, roughly crafted from Make's article, is now four months old. See my referenced blog for detail and photographs. I build it on a foundation of finely crushed sea shells, a few tablespoons of sand and pebbles scraped from a local pond. A pair of snails and three ghost shrimp were added plus quite a lot more plant life than recommended -- all sourced from the local pet store. The shrimp died off after about a month but the snails multiplied. It's like playing the real life, fresh water version of Sim City. Certainly gives you a lot to think and talk about.
  http://slapphappe.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/fresh-water-biospheres/

  Posted by slapphappe on June 11, 2008 at 22:05:29 Pacific Time

• TSSM Success?
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  Has anyone had any long term success with a TSSM? I am a 7th grade science teacher and would love to create some with my classes but I know the students would be bummed if our econaut died too soon. I want to create 6 so our survival rate could be higher but I am wondering what other people have been seeing....
  
  Thanks!

  Posted by kaiaua on August 18, 2007 at 09:17:08 Pacific Time

• TSSM Success?
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  Article author here. I had the econauts in multiple systems last >3 months. Sounds like the MAKE intern's system has done even better -- 4 or 5 months at this point. I know that other people haven't been as successful but obviously I don't know every single detail of what they did.
  
  The important thing is to NOT just throw a bunch of pond plants and animals in a jar and expect it to keep an econaut alive. There are some principles you're going to need to follow to prevent algal takeover and a likely decline in oxygen supply. They're mentioned in passing in the article. For more details, see the chapter on classroom microcosms in the Beyer and Odum book referenced on this page.
  
  If you're doing this for classroom use, you could make it more of an actual experimental design. Maybe you could make 5 according to the recipe and 5 lacking some essential ingredient (such as sunlight). Having multiples in each group might help you get beyond the random chance elements of making a single TSSM (for example, purchasing a shrimp in old age).
  
  Post your progress somewhere if you go through with it!
  
  

  Posted by mjb2000 on August 18, 2007 at 11:16:50 Pacific Time

• Calcium carbonate?
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  I went to a couple of good aquarium supply stores, and while both had huge selections of chemicals, none had anything labeled as calcium carbonate per se (although many don't list their actual ingredients). Is there a particular brand/product the author had in mind? Is there an alternative? Also, searching the web it seems that some online nutrition stores sell pure calcium carbonate powder. Is there any reason why that wouldn't work?

  Posted by yambu on August 13, 2007 at 16:39:08 Pacific Time

• Calcium carbonate?
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  Powdered calcium carbonate (chalk) is readily available from home brewing shops. Brewers use it to increase the hardness of water so that the bitter oils from hops can dissolve more easily.

  Posted by cgknight on January 05, 2008 at 10:16:41 Pacific Time

• Calcium carbonate?
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  The role of the calcium carbonate is the prevent the system from becoming too acid... which is a typical event in ponds with a lot of nutrients. So in theory any buffer substance could work.
  
  I tried sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) but dumping some of that into a prepared TSSM ended up killing the aquanat... probably because of the sudden change in osmotic conditions. So I changed to calcium carbonate, which dissolves much much more slowly.
  
  An alternative source of calcium carbonate is seashells, which are partly made of calcium carbonate, but won't have the surface area of a prepared powder. (Maybe you could break them up?) This is probably your safest bet because seashells aren't going to have any mystery ingredients that might mess up the recipe.
  
  Then there's also plain Tums (the antacid), where the active ingredient is calcium carbonate. Only problem with this is that there's probably starches and sugars and flavors and stuff mixed in there, and I'm not sure what effect that might have, which is why I didn't recommend it in the article.
  
  Maybe the dietary calcium carbonate you mentioned would be good. I guess the less "mystery ingredients" it has the better.
  
  Good luck!

  Posted by mjb2000 on August 14, 2007 at 07:30:26 Pacific Time

• Here's mine
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  I posted some pics and a blog post on the TSSM we built here today:
  
  http://picasaweb.google.com/peterries/ShrimpAndSnailJar
  
  Our little biosphere is only one day old so we'll have to wait to see how it does. I'll write here again when we think the little swimmers are all deceased.
  
  One bit of advice for anyone else trying this, don't do what we did and let the excitement of putting all the ingredients together at once overwhelm you, only to realize you've just buried your little shrimp friends under the rocks.
  
  :)
  

  Posted by nebulous-bee on July 15, 2007 at 10:44:37 Pacific Time

• Here's mine
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  The blog post is here:
  
  http://caesarandlouie.wordpress.com/2007/07/15/econauts/
  
  :)
  

  Posted by nebulous-bee on July 15, 2007 at 10:45:19 Pacific Time

• Here's mine - Update
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  OK, so we must have done something wrong. I'm sorry to report that our Econauts only lasted about a week. Here's how it went:
  
  - The first couple of days seemed great. The little guys swam around and the water remained clear.
  
  - On the third day, surprisingly, a few new residents appeared. We saw these tiny tiny worms swimming around. No idea why they only appeared at that point. The snails started hanging out right at the water line at the top of the jar too. Maybe they didn't like something in the water?
  
  - On the fourth and fifth days, the water started to get a bit cloudy but just a bit. (I know that's not scientific, sorry) The snails spent all of their time at the water's edge and the shrimp started "jumping" out of the water and sticking to the glass on the inside of the jar. Now I'm pretty sure the water had changed and they weren't doing well.
  
  - By the seventh day, all of the snails and the shrimp were dead. The water got cloudy and that was that.
  
  If I do this again, I will get some sort of pH tester so if this happens again, I can test the water before I close it up and after so I can tell what happened.
  
  It was fun while it lasted though. Thanks for the ideas/help here, everyone.
  

  Posted by nebulous-bee on August 25, 2007 at 12:11:57 Pacific Time

• Here's mine - Update
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  Sorry to hear about your troubles, nebulous. This could have happened to anyone, but it also might be the cause of several ways that you (seem to) have altered the recipe. The cloudiness in the water might have been algal growth enabled by an excess of nutrients in your system (I notice in your blog pics there seems to be an abundance of sludge or mud down at the bottom, mixed in with rocks? If this is sludge or mud, this is way too much.) Such algal growth might cause oxygen available to the animals to drop. Sparseness of oxygen also fits with animal migrations to the top of the water. Lack of oxygen might also be caused by unhealthy or slow-growing plants or insufficient light. I notice in the pictures of your system that you don't seem to be using the same (fast-growing) plant as in the recipe. So those are my theories, but it's possible to have such a result even if you follow the recipe 100%. This kind of "throw stuff together" system will never have 100% repeatability. Thanks for trying! mjb

  Posted by mjb2000 on August 28, 2007 at 11:54:40 Pacific Time

• Here's mine... Update :(
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  OK, so we must have done something wrong. I'm sorry to report that our Econauts only lasted about a week. Here's how it went:
  
  - The first couple of days seemed great. The little guys swam around and the water remained clear.
  
  - On the third day, surprisingly, a few new residents appeared. We saw these tiny tiny worms swimming around. No idea why they only appeared at that point. The snails started hanging out right at the water line at the top of the jar too. Maybe they didn't like something in the water?
  
  - On the fourth and fifth days, the water started to get a bit cloudy but just a bit. (I know that's not scientific, sorry) The snails spent all of their time at the water's edge and the shrimp started "jumping" out of the water and sticking to the glass on the inside of the jar. Now I'm pretty sure the water had changed and they weren't doing well.
  
  - By the seventh day, all of the snails and the shrimp were dead. The water got cloudy and that was that.
  
  If I do this again, I will get some sort of pH tester so if this happens again, I can test the water before I close it up and after so I can tell what happened.
  
  It was fun while it lasted though. Thanks for the ideas/help here, everyone.
  

  Posted by nebulous-bee on August 25, 2007 at 12:11:28 Pacific Time

• Here's mine... Update :(
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  OK, so we must have done something wrong. I'm sorry to report that our Econauts only lasted about a week. Here's how it went:
  
  - The first couple of days seemed great. The little guys swam around and the water remained clear.
  
  - On the third day, surprisingly, a few new residents appeared. We saw these tiny tiny worms swimming around. No idea why they only appeared at that point. The snails started hanging out right at the water line at the top of the jar too. Maybe they didn't like something in the water?
  
  - On the fourth and fifth days, the water started to get a bit cloudy but just a bit. (I know that's not scientific, sorry) The snails spent all of their time at the water's edge and the shrimp started "jumping" out of the water and sticking to the glass on the inside of the jar. Now I'm pretty sure the water had changed and they weren't doing well.
  
  - By the seventh day, all of the snails and the shrimp were dead. The water got cloudy and that was that.
  
  If I do this again, I will get some sort of pH tester so if this happens again, I can test the water before I close it up and after so I can tell what happened.
  
  It was fun while it lasted though. Thanks for the ideas/help here, everyone.
  

  Posted by nebulous-bee on August 25, 2007 at 12:11:15 Pacific Time

• Pretty expensive project
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  I gather from the Internets that making your own cichlid salt is a possibility. Since this project only calls for like a teaspoon of the stuff and a whole bottle costs $9, maybe including an alternative recipe would have been a good idea.

  Posted by drysdam on May 21, 2007 at 06:41:34 Pacific Time

• Pretty expensive project
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  Does it really have to be a glass Jar or could it be plastic, I know in Make it said that you need a glass jar because, a plastic one might leak air. But if I use a plastic one would the whole cycle screw up and everything die?

  Posted by ghicken on June 03, 2007 at 17:30:32 Pacific Time

• Glass Jar
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  Does it really have to be a glass Jar or could it be plastic, I know in Make it said that you need a glass jar because, a plastic one might leak air. But if I use a plastic one would the whole cycle screw up and everything die?

  Posted by ghicken on June 03, 2007 at 17:29:52 Pacific Time

• Glass Jar
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  Hi ghicken, article author here. The main issue with plastic from my perspective is the leaking air. That's the concern for which there is some laboratory evidence. Of course there are many types of plastic so it's hard to generalize. I don't see any particular reason the system would utterly fail using plastic, unless it leaches a lot of nasty chemicals for some reason. You just can't be as confident that you've created a really good seal. Good luck, mjb

  Posted by mjb2000 on June 04, 2007 at 11:02:00 Pacific Time

• Glass Jar
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  Sorry I accidentally replied Twice.

  Posted by ghicken on June 03, 2007 at 17:31:22 Pacific Time

• Glass Jar
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  I just went to safeway and got a big tub of salsa. But have a question as well. I cant find anything at any petshop within a 100 mile radius that has the shrimp or no lake that i can get the amphopods or what ever they are. Is there something else we can use. I tryed just an albino algi eater but after a day it died... so help him god... :P jk. But what else is there that you can get at a common pet supply?

  Posted by brianmay27 on June 19, 2007 at 22:51:52 Pacific Time

• Amano shrimp
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  brianmay27: If you search for "amano shrimp" or "Caridina japonica" online, you'll find several vendors who will ship them to you.

  Posted by yambu on August 14, 2007 at 17:47:57 Pacific Time

• Glass Jar
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  sorry you're having difficulty getting supplies, brianmay27. don't just throw stuff in there at random... it will likely die. there are reasons for all the ingredients listed.
  
  i'm not sure what an albino algae eater is, but if it was a fish it was probably WAY WAY too big for this system. remember, the plants in there have to produce enough oxygen for their own metabolism, PLUS extra food and oxygen to support any animals you have in there. you probably need like a 20:1 or 40:1 ratio of plants to animals to keep animals alive.
  
  unless you live in Death Valley, in all likelihood there is a pond or stream near you. you just need to find it. this sounds like your best source of supplies if you don't have a decent aquarium store. you could in all likelihood get duckweed and some amphipods and just go with that. make the biggest amphipod your "econaut".
  
  as you substitute ingredients, your chances of success will be best if you stick to the principles described in the article.
  - MUCH MUCH more plant biomass than animal
  - water that is nutrient poor, not muddy
  - high light input but no extreme temperatures
  
  imagine if you had to live in a sealed greenhouse with all your own urine & feces. how big would that greenhouse need to be for you to survive without getting sick? pretty big, right?
  
  that's a lot what this bottle is like. animals need to be small so the plants can support really support them.
  
  good luck!

  Posted by mjb2000 on June 20, 2007 at 10:24:12 Pacific Time

• Glass Jar
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  Ok thanks! also how big would you say the shrimp are. Like the size of a Pencil eraser? or larger?

  Posted by brianmay27 on June 20, 2007 at 11:04:36 Pacific Time