Great Salt Lake in a bottle 5
Channel: Miles Johnson
Date: 2013-01-28

An attempt to create a closed ecosystem based on the Great Salt Lake.

This was recorded 28 Jan 2013. About 15 months after sealing the bottle. This video replaces one recorded a week earlier in vertical (portrait) mode.

Time for an update on the progress of my experimental Great Salt
Lake closed eco-system.

It has been running for 15 months. It seems to be doing well.

It is located at USU, in a south-facing window. There is no
overhang over this window, so it gets many hours of direct sunlight.

Outside, you can see the latest attempt to render Cache Valley
uninhabitable. Last week we had inversions with deadly PM2.5
levels. That was followed by freezing rain. Today, we have a foot
of fresh snow.

As you can see, this is a typical office environment. In addition
to direct sunlight, it gets indirect office light.

Lets scan around for a minute.

We have Bob.. Here is my desk... Another Bob. The new video wall.. The video
wall features several instances of USU's Network visualization tools..

Over here we have some more network monitoring.. USU's IPVisualizer..

If you are interested in these Network visualizations, they are
available for download. The source is GPL. We have created a few
YouTube videos that describe them in more detail.

Next we come to Guan Yu.. A DarkNet monitor.. The GeoIP network
monitor.. More instances of the Organic visualizers..

A pineapple...

Here is another attempt at a closed ecosystem. That one is a fresh
water ecosystem. It is almost 7 years old. Originally it contained
more variability, including many visible inverterbrates, but after
a couple months, most of the system collapsed. Now, it is primary
producers: Duckweed and algae.

And now we are back to the Orange tree and the attempt at a
Great Salt Lake closed ecosystem.

Let's move in and focus on the sample.

This is a 5 gallon carbouy. It is sealed with a black rubber
stopper. You can read more about the initial conditions in the
notes to this video.

The visual distortions are due to the curvature and ribbing of
the glass carbouy.

After a year and 3 months, this sealed ecosystem has not collapsed.
There are still many brine shrimp. However, there has been some changes.

Much of the available biomass is now concentrated in the bottom as
this fibrous algae. It almost looks like spirogrya. There is also
a thin layer of algae on the inside surface of the bottle.

The sand in the bottom of the bottle seems to be a reservoir of
nutrients. There is a lot of algae growth on the surface of the
sand.

In addition to the algae, the surface of the sand is now covered by
tiny tan pellets. They seem to be about 1/4th of a millimeter
in size. They may be failed brine shrimp cysts or brine shrimp
fecal pellets or possibly some mineral precipitation. Or maybe
some combination of the above.

This is probably my most successful attempt at a closed ecosystem.

The next step is to see if I can create several smaller variants.

If my wife doesn't kill me, I plan to goto the Great Salt Lake again
and get some more samples. Maybe this time we will try 1 and 2 gallon
bottles.

Initial conditions:
On 4 Oct 2011, drove to Great Salt Lake, Antelope Island Marina. Collected 2 quarts of water and a cup of sediments. This sample included several visible brine shrimp and a large number of brine shrimp cysts. I measured the salinity using my hydrometer. It was off the scale. Probably about 1.075 or maybe 5 times salinity of sea water.

When I got home, I mixed up:
-  4 gallons of tap water.
- 4 cups of Sea Salt (from an marine aquarium store.)
- 1/4 cup Epson Salts (uncolored, unscented).
The hydrometer said 1.04, or about 2 times salinity of sea water.

Next day, I mixed it all up. To a clean 5 gallon carboy I added:
- 6 large (about 1 inch) Fluval bio-filtration cylinders.
- 8 cups fine sea sand
- 4 gallons of salt water.
- Water and sediments from Great Salt Lake.
- Contents of a Sea Monkey kit (reserving about 1/2 of the food packet.) 
- - For genetic variability.
- About 1/8 tsp of 10 year old brine shrimp cysts.
- - For more genetic variability.

Now, the hydrometer says: 1.051.

Amazingly the shrimp from the Geat Salt Lake survived, and flourished.

I picked this salinity for 2 reasons:
- I wanted it saline enough to suppress non-GSL organisms.
- I wanted it fresh enough to keep the brine shrimp from producing enduring cysts. Long-lived cysts would tie up the biomass.

I am hoping that in this state, the closed ecosystem will be able to endlessly recycle all products. Hopefully, enough biomass will remain brine shrimp to sustain a viable gene-pool.