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.