Echoes - Stromatolite Reef - Hypersaline

[mossanimal]

Wow. I've just discovered this thread and haven't gotten through it yet... but this is amazing. I'm a middle school science teacher that is using a reef aquarium to teach but my background is in evolutionary biology. I never dreamed of someone trying to recreate stromatolites in an artificial system! I live in the Lake Superior region and have a few examples of actual stromatolite fossils and also quite a bit of Banded Iron Formation. I'm excited to see what you come up with and if there is a path for me to do something similar in my classroom.

 

[rhizotron]

Wow. I've just discovered this thread and haven't gotten through it yet... but this is amazing. I'm a middle school science teacher that is using a reef aquarium to teach but my background is in evolutionary biology. I never dreamed of someone trying to recreate stromatolites in an artificial system! I live in the Lake Superior region and have a few examples of actual stromatolite fossils and also quite a bit of Banded Iron Formation. I'm excited to see what you come up with and if there is a path for me to do something similar in my classroom.

Thanks so much for stopping by! If you ever have the time + space for another setup, I would love to share these Great Salt Lake microbes that I have going here in culture. I haven't updated the stromatolites tank in a while, but I also have some more observations to add.

 

[mossanimal]

Thanks so much for stopping by! If you ever have the time + space for another setup, I would love to share these Great Salt Lake microbes that I have going here in culture. I haven't updated the stromatolites tank in a while, but I also have some more observations to add.

Oh cool. So by Great Lakes microbes, you mean Cyanobacteria??

 

[rhizotron]

Oh cool. So by Great Lakes microbes, you mean Cyanobacteria??

I looked over the fresh samples with a light microscope and what I saw were a couple of different Cyanobacteria, a benthic Diatom and a few different Protists. So it does not seem to be a lot of diversity, but everything is adapted to the hypersaline (>85ppt) conditions of the lake. Anaerobic, sulfate-reducing Bacteria are also present in the mixed culture that I maintain in the tank and in another smaller enclosure.

Another interesting thing that emerged sometime later was Dunaliella salina. I had also purchased a commercial culture of this, but the D. salina that grew from the Great Salt Lake samples was more vigorous. I have some of it going in this phytoplankton wall lamp. The hypersaline conditions exclude potential contaminants and it has been easier to maintain than Nannochloropsis and others I've tried like this...

 

[mossanimal]

I looked over the fresh samples with a light microscope and what I saw were a couple of different Cyanobacteria, a benthic Diatom and a few different Protists. So it does not seem to be a lot of diversity, but everything is adapted to the hypersaline (>85ppt) conditions of the lake. Anaerobic, sulfate-reducing Bacteria are also present in the mixed culture that I maintain in the tank and in another smaller enclosure.

Another interesting thing that emerged sometime later was Dunaliella salina as a very vigorous phytoplankton culture. I had also purchased a commercial culture of this, but the D. salina that grew from the Great Salt Lake samples was much more vigorous. I have some of it going in this phytoplankton wall lamp. The hypersaline conditions exclude potential contaminants and it has been much easier to maintain than Nannochloropsis and others I've tried...

Oh… you meant Great Salt lake! I live on Lake Superior and I was referring to the ancient stromatolite fossils and Banded Iron Formations (rocks that show the first evidence of oxidation by Cyanobacteria in early oceans).

But… that is so cool. I would love to recreate an ancient ocean in my classroom.

 

[rhizotron]

Oh… you meant Great Salt lake! I live on Lake Superior and I was referring to the ancient stromatolite fossils and Banded Iron Formations (rocks that show the first evidence of oxidation by Cyanobacteria in early oceans).

But… that is so cool. I would love to recreate an ancient ocean in my classroom.

Yes Great Salt Lake has hundreds of acres of living microbialites. Here's a recent article with some nice drone pics....

https://www.biographic.com/high-and...m7ru2fgHwmP1ZJqzNWj_kNXGupR4bFKiiX56PhN7zShTA

If you want to try growing some of this I can send you a few pieces of stone colonized with the Cyanobacteria and other organisms.

 

[Arkardios]

This is incredible! Just read everything in one go and I'm blown away; this is right up my alley. Inspiration is hitting hard, haha.

Following!

 

[Sam123]

New update for one of the Winogradsky Columns.

You can really get lost in it...

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Битва на небесах - Battle in Heaven

Day 1336

Winogradsky Column: watertight enclosure, antique-style frame, LED lighting, live microbial cultures.

12cm X 51cm X 64cm

This is really, truly beautiful. You could exhibit this stuff as living art. Loving the ‘yellow’ frame too.

 

[rhizotron]

This is really, truly beautiful. You could exhibit this stuff as living art. Loving the ‘yellow’ frame too.

That thing is one of my clay panel vertical garden features with biocrust organisms and mini plants...

 

[rhizotron]

Just finished most of the assembly for another thing to hang on the wall. Pretty basic construction, but I had some tooling marks to sand out and other fussy little jobs and I was up all night with it.

This is intended to model and visualize oxidation of organic carbon, decomposition and the development of soils. I have some electronics to round up too and then I can get it set up with the stuff inside...

 

[rhizotron]

I got it hung up in its spot on the wall...

Before filling it up though I'm going to assemble and position the electronics with a piece of t-track to the right. This is pretty basic with the same microcontroller housing and LCD display as this other setup below, but without the rotary encoder. This doesn't look like all that much, but it's a lot of little parts to cut out and round up and I'll have to buy another forty dollars of Adafruit stuff also to complete it...

 

[19Mateo83]

This is by far the coolest, most mad scientist thing I have ever seen in an aquarium. I have always been fascinated by stromatolites and the role they have played in the evolution of life on earth. I’m going to throw this out there, since you are experimenting with extremophiles…. Have you ever thought about messing with heat loving bacteria? Like the colorful ones you see in the geothermal pools at Yellowstone or the sulfur driven ecosystems that have evolved around the deep sea hydrothermal vents.

 

[rhizotron]

This is by far the coolest, most mad scientist thing I have ever seen in an aquarium. I have always been fascinated by stromatolites and the role they have played in the evolution of life on earth. I’m going to throw this out there, since you are experimenting with extremophiles…. Have you ever thought about messing with heat loving bacteria? Like the colorful ones you see in the geothermal pools at Yellowstone or the sulfur driven ecosystems that have evolved around the deep sea hydrothermal vents.

Thanks for stopping by. Yes I have wondered about a display with thermophiles, but I haven't thought of a very good way to set up an aquarium like that. I had originally built the 6G acrylic frag tank in the picture below with the idea of keeping a pure culture of Halobacterium salinarum, This organism can grow at room temperature, but with optimal development at 42C. I didn't really follow up with it, though. Maintaining that temperature with a submersible heater would have been a lot of power consumption and I think I would also see a lot of condensation and salt creep all around the lid, so I didn't even try it. This photo shows the setup with Dunaliella salina—a halophilic, but not thermophilic, Green Alga—but now the tank is empty.

The kitchen science culture for H. salinarum is something I should try to figure out. I got it to grow in the culture tubes that came with the kit I purchased, but was never able to multiply it beyond that. There is a way to do this with a brine near saturation and peptone or other protein source, but I haven't gotten the specifics yet. If anybody here knows more detail, I would be interested to hear.

It would be even more compelling to get a hot spring mixed culture going in something like an aquarium display. I've wondered about using some kind of insulated basin with a clear lid for heat retention and a view in the through the top. I don't know if the physics would really work out, but a reptile IR heat lamp might function as a less zappy and awkward heat source alternative as compared to a regular submersible aquarium heater cranked up all the way. And you could hang that over the enclosure along with the visible light source for photosynthesis.

(Creative Commons image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand...nd_Prismatic_Spring_(view_from_the_south).jpg )

 

[rhizotron]

The new UNS 45S tank got here delivered tonight and I started putting together the 80/20 aluminum stand. I was hoping this pretty short (28") stand with a nano tank on top would be sturdy enough with those internal connectors, but it's obviously not. I'd rather not put additional connectors all around, but I think this style of external brace around some of the joints in the rear with probably stiffen it up enough...

https://www.tnutz.com/product/jp-010-h/

That HDPE sheet makes such nice shelves for a project like this—so easy to work on the table saw and table router.

 

[rhizotron]

Holy cow this took forever. But I finally got this thing all assembled, filled up and hung on the wall...

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Moonwort Studio

Coulee Region, 1983

Day 1

Edaphotron: watertight enclosure, electronic gas sensor, microcontroller, bonsai gravel, plant parts, soil invertebrates and soil microflora.

38cm X 8cm X 58cm

Through the action of soil bacteria, fungi and invertebrate animals, the plant leaves will decompose to form soil organic matter slowly combining with weathered clay gravel, thus modeling soil development in nature.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Incredible work as always!

 

[rhizotron]

Incredible work as always!

THanks very much!

 

[rhizotron]

Here's an update for the edaphotron.

Day 32

This seems to be coming along very nicely. It went through a rather ugly moldy phase with mold spores and mycelia all over the clear front panel, but that all melted away after a time. Compare with the day #1 photo (last image below) and you can see the dried leaves and other materials fell a couple of inches with decomposition. I added a few orange Maple (Acer) leaves today to refresh the supply of organic matter.

 

[rhizotron]

Mars

Day 653

Nature is Metal.

Really happy with this thing. The stone and gravel surfaces have developed such a rich patina texture + color with slow development of the Cyanobacteria biocrust. A couple of Mosses growing as volunteer colonial mats also found their way inside via spores.

 

[rhizotron]

While I have the pictures handy here is an update for the Winogradsky's hung up on the wall in the gallery space.

The cylinder setup is really pleasingly featured with bright red Pink Sulfur Bacteria, Green Sulfur bacteria and an area with Cyanobacteria up near the top. The framed piece is more subdued with black sulfate reduction, Green Sulfur Bacteria and amber Diatoms, but I think this harmonizes nicely with the faux antique picture frame.