Still here?

It has been awhile since I have been back to this place. Can anyone here me?

Week 12

This week there is not a whole lot of changes to the eco column. The Terrestrial chamber continues to grow to a point where it is outgrowing the camber. When I look at the camber from the outside, it looked like the soil was very dry but when I took the top off the camber, there was a lot of moisture inside the column. The reason for this is because of the different temperatures inside and outside the eco column. Just as when cold winds collide with warm winds to produce storms in the world, the collision between the cold temperatures outside of the bottle and the warmer temperatures found inside the eco column. The temperatures is higher then the outside temperature because of the lights that acts as a source of light and a source of heat. This effect is like the green house effect and the earth. The green house effect is when the earth absorb the heat from the sun and releases some of the heat back out into the atmosphere but not all the heat is released into space because particles in the atmosphere blocks the heat from escaping the atmosphere of the earth. Relating that to the eco column, the lamp acts like a sun to provide heat and energy, the plastic wall around the eco column acts like the atmosphere prevent some of the heat from being released back into the classroom which acts as space. With the collision of warm and cold temperatures, moisture is releases back into the system and hence there is very little water require to keep the system from dying.

The decomposition camber is doing well fruit fly wise because the plants seems to have stopped growing but the fruit flies seems to be doing well. Fruit flies grew very quickly over the pass few days. The first time I introduce the fruit fly into the column, there were only five that was released inside the decomposition, now there are over thirty of them.


The aquatic section of the eco column remains the same from all the other weeks because there is really no changed aside from the minnow slightly getting bigger since he has been alive all this time.








I think I managed to catch one male and two female. I notice that the two new turtles have red ears on them and the original one does not have any red marking on it's ears, I am guessing that they might be two different species.

Week 11

This week I took out our anole because we are nearing the end of the year. I decided to let him lose because I did not want him to suffer being in the camber anymore. When I took the anole out I did notice a few problems with it, mainly that it was going to die soon. In the past day or two the anole became very inactive and it had it's eyes closed most of the time. As I put my hand into the camber to take it out he still response to me even with his eyes closed. After I took him out of the column, I notice that he had lost most of his talons. The reason for this is found in the chamber itself because there was hardly any craw space for it to get out of the soil. He was in the soil for so long that he lost his talons and caused him not to claw on the plant as he used to. Now that the anole is released, I am have second thoughts such as it was nearing death and I still release him into the wild. Another thing that have been on my mind was that he was pampered for the past few month by me feeding him crickets, my hope is that he is still able to go out and find food to survive.

Now my eco column is without the company of the anole, but all continue to live on. Our plant in the terrestrial camber continues to grow without end because it is now touching the top of the column and there are still signs of new roots taking place. As I was looking at the roots I notice that there was movement in the soil. The moving creatures looked like crickets that escape the terrifying jaws of the anole. Aside from the crickets, there were other smaller bugs in the soil area but I am not too sure as to what they are. All that I know is that they are small and are brown. Back to the plant, as I said before it is still getting taller and flower buds seems to be forming near the top of the plant.

In the decomposition camber, all the fruit flys died because of the sudden cold weather this past few days in addition to the cold temputure in the room. Before the camber was swarming with life but now there is completely no movement. The plants seems to be the same as it has been for the past few weeks. The banana that I dropped in for the fruit fly has now become something like a slob, it looks like a liquid but not reallying flowing around.

The aquatic section looks fine on the outside but I have no idea how it is inside. I notice that the alge is slowing it's growth because there is really no where else to grow. While looking at the plants in this section, I saw a few bubbles forming from the roots of the plants and the alge. The bubbles looks like it could be oxygen that is produced from the alge because the bubbles are stuck in the roots. The plants are now growing at wild angles now because there is no more room for it. The minnow is still alive from the very first day and seems to be swimming near the surface of the camber because the alge grew all over the roots and the bottom of the camber. I believe the fish is eating in things from the decomposition camber such as bugs from the soil or possibly the fruit flies that manage its way down into the water. The reason on why the minnow is still alive is thanks to the decomposition camber providing the fish with resources to stay alive.
Me and Tony went out and caught more turtles on Friday last week and do you know which two are the new ones?

Week 10

This week is pretty much like last week, there is hardly any changes now that the eco system inside the column have reach a stable point. Aside from the fact that I have a balance eco system, I did added a few things to improve it. This week I watered our eco column twice using the water from the fish tank. I also fed my anole three large crickets this week and it ate all three them without any problems. After the first crickets I notice that our anole changed from a green color to a brownish color for a day and the next day it changed back to it's original green skin color. I think the reason on why the anole changed color is because it ate the the cricket that was a brown color. So the juice from the cricket that it ate sink into its skin from it's digestive track. Another reason why our anole changed color was that it was changing to the the environment in the terrestrial chamber that is composed mainly of soil and a few plants. Since our anole is mainly on the ground, so it changed to a color brown so that it will be able to catch it's prey which is the crickets. By changing it's color, the crickets can be fooled into thinking that there is no predator to get them, so when there is no predator the crickets will have no need to go under the soil and hide from the anole. When the crickets believe that it is safe, the anole is already almost ready to catch and devour the poor cricket. It is interesting to note that once I drop the cricket in front out the anole, the anole waited patiently for the right moment in order to surprise the cricket. While the crickets was getting used to the new environment without recognize that the anole was right behind it, the anole made a quick movement and all was over for the cricket. So the color change was important in that the anole can fool the crickets into believing that there is no problems in it's environment, before it is too late.
The plants are doing well and are still green, I think the plants are slowing down its roots system because I have been watering it about once a week. Before we had a flower glowing in our eco column but now that our anole is moving about, it trampled down our flower, so now we do not have any more flowers. I notice that alge is growing inside the soil section of the terrestrial camber so that means the column is well watered and it has plenty of CO2.
Another thing that I added to the eco column was fruit flies in the decomposition just because it will bring some life in that chamber. Other than that, there is really no change, out plants seems to be at a standstill.
In our aquatic section our minnow is doing well as all the past week. Now that I think about it when I water the eco column, the water runs from the terrestrial camber all the way down to the aquatic section. In this rundown, the water washes down material such as bugs or waste from the upper two sections which the fish might be able to eat. The alge in this section continues to grow at an unstoppable rate.






I just wanted to let you know that my turtle is doing well and I think it is having a good time in my small fish tank.

Week 9

There is not much to report this week except some small business. For one thing, I made it rain by getting water from the fish tank and watering down the entire system. Afterwards, I drop one small cricket into the terrestrial camber for our anoleThere is not a whole and it snatched it right away. So I decided to drop another one into the camber and the anole quick went for the pray. I did not do this just because I wanted to though. I drop two cricket down because I recall the anole as being much bigger when I first caugt it and put it into our eco column. Just last week I saw that our anole was getting thin as a stick until I drop a cricket down. Another thing to note is that I drop two cricket down last week and I thing the anole only ate one of the two and the one that escape the predator buried itself into the soil to get away from his sight. While look for our buried crickets I stumbled across some other insects under the soil, but I was unable to identify what they are. They are light brown and very small, aside from that there is no other details I can give. Anyways back to the crickets, I noticed that when I drop two crickets down at the same time, they would immediately start crawling around tying to find an open hole in the soil to bury itself. Unfortunately one of the crickets got caught in the mouth on the anole, but the other one just continue to walk around while the anole slowly digest the fresh cricket. So today, I drop another two cricket, but this time I dropped them down one at a time so that the cricket will not be able to bury itself before getting eaten. In other news our plants continue to thrive and prosper. I would like to think that since everything seems to be doing quite well, our eco system has reach a stage of stability.
In our decompostition, it has become hard to tell if anything happening aside from the fact that there seems to be new roots taking place. The plants are doing well in this area but I can not seen any real growth in them as I can see in the terrestrial camber.
The aquadic section stills seems to be doing well as well judging by the signs of alge taking over our entire aquadic camber. It is getting to the point where it is become somewhat difficult to look from one side and to see the other side of the camber.

Week 8

During this week, growth continues without no sign of slowing down. The three peace of grass that is somehow sticking out of the eco column continues to grow since the first day we started the eco column. Although it did not grow very much at first, it started to grow when we watered the system for the first time a few weeks back and ever since then, all the plants have been taking root. There were a few things I notice that were different than before. One thing is our anole, it was green when we first put him in the column, but now it is slowly changing to a brownish color starting from it's head. Another thing that I notice about him was that he is getting skinny each passing moment. I usually go out to find some crickets to put in the eco column so that our anole would eat and be happy. But now I am thinking about feed him four times a week because I noticed that his body is getting very small and his head is remaining the same with the addition of the brown lines. So on Tuesday the 1st of April, I dropped in two small crickets and the anole snatched the first one up in an instant. After feeding I decided I will feed him every two days. Other than our anole, our plants is doing quite fine, it continues to grow. When we first started this project, we are able to see the soil but now to my amazement, I can hardly see any soil because of the vegetation that is growing every where in our eco column. While on the subject of plants our little flower is getting stronger to where the buds are able to stand up vertically, which leads me to think that the flowers are about to bloom. You can say that we have a nice little niche going on. Our keystone specie would be our anole because it is providing CO2 for the plants and it is controlling the crickets population.
Out decomposition is still growing with more signs of leaves developing and it is getting taller. Our moss seems like it might hive stopped growing but it still looks healthy because of the many green leaves. We added a small piece of banana to this section and it is hard to tell if there were any real big effect aside from the plants growing under the leaves.
In our aquatic section, there is not much change from the fact that the alge is still on the move to take over and it is making it harder to see what is going on this section. Our minnow is still alive and doing well. At this point I would like to think that our aquatic section if fully establish because plants are taking root and using the dead bodies of fish to clean out the water to where it is livable for new fishes. A sign that this section is doing well is the fact that the alge is growing completely around the chamber.

Week 7

This week I seen a lot of growth taking place in our entire eco column.
In our aquatic chamber alge continues to grow to the point it is becoming a little difficult to see through the plastic. If you take a closer look at the plants inside the camber, you will see the alge growing on the dead roots. I did some search on alge and I learned that alge is good for the system because it produces oxygen for the system thus the fish will be able to breath in the water. I know people who would think,"Fish just need to be in water to survive." I learned that fish needs oxygen to breath in water through all my past fish tank experience. To affirm that fish needs water, we are doing water test weekly checking everything especially oxygen in the water. In our camber, I believe that it is rich in oxygen thanks to both the plants that are taking root and to the alge. I also learned from wikipedia that alge is very beneficial to the system because it takes in waste from things around it like toxic chemicals to bio waste from the the fish.

In our decomposition chamber, things are really growing thanks to the sunlight and to us watering it. I did not see much change in this section until we watered the camber and things started to take off. The moss is growing very quickly and the soil is moist most of the time now. Before we water the soil, the soil was always dry even though the system was watering itself by the humidity. After we did the initial watering, the soil becomes very moist and is still moist till now. Now that I think about it, the cap at the bottom of the decomposition chamber is submerge in the water and therefore the water is wetting the soil. You see this in stores now and days where there is a water tray beneath the pot of plant. At first you would think that when you water the plant the excess will go to the tray. In reality, the tray holds water and is soaked up into the soil. It also helps because when the water evaporate into the air, the soil will be able to grab some of the water as it enters into the atmosphere.
There is one more thing that I notice is the white root that is found sticking out of the soil. I do not know what it belongs to right now but in due time I think we will be able to see where it comes from.
For our terrestrial chamber, there is some new things but not very much. One new thing is that the small flower is developing to form it's buds. Another new thing is some new roots that are forming all over the soil. We added a small cricket to the camber and our anole snapped it right off. Our big plants are getting taller compared from the last few weeks and when we started the project. There is also thing that I notice and that is our soil is all the same moisture but for some reason, the soil seems to be dividing itself into two. What I mean is that the top soil is divided but an empty space or not as much soil and then there is the bottom half of the soil which is full. I guess that is why we have top soil on the earth and beneath that is harder soil and then we have rocks and such.