Green Lake, New York - Building a Freshwater Microbialite Reef

[rhizotron]

Green Lake, New York - Building a Freshwater Microbialite Reef

This is a journal thread continuation of an another discussion I started right over here:

Approximating and Maintaining Water Chemistry of a Meromictic Lake

It took me a while to figure out a tank configuration and hardscape concept, but I finally settled on one of my shallow 24" X 24" enclosures and this nice sandstone outcrop slab I purchased from a local landscape supplier.

This pic from the field collection day shows Deadman's Point, the area of Green Lake with the largest microbialite reef development. You can't see a lot of detail here, but the reef is visible as a broad shelf projecting out into the lake with a steep dropoff into deeper waters.

Here is the culture tank I set up with 72 days of growth for coccoid Cyanobacteria, benthic Diatoms, filamentous Green Algae and other microflora. I have a couple more things to organize, but I should be able to introduce these later this week. Exciting!

 

[cdemoss01]

Amazing.

 

[CasperOe]

Now that's something we don't see every day!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Well, that is impressive looking!

 

[rhizotron]

Amazing.

Now that's something we don't see every day!

Well, that is impressive looking!

Thanks for stopping by!

It was an extensive hunt to find the right rock and a big relief to finally get it in there.

 

[rhizotron]

Actually the tank is currently just filled with tapwater. It finally dawned on me that instead of measuring out individual portion salt blends, I can just make a big batch, then use the scale to take 16L portions from that for mixing in a 5-gallon pail.

Maybe tonight in the middle of night I'll finally have this ready.

 

[rhizotron]

Exciting!

It took a few days and I had to use to CO2, but I got almost 92 grams (leaving just a little sediment on the bottom of the pail at the end) of the Green Lake salt blend to dissolve into about 56 liters of water to make this very hard water.

In recent weeks there has been excellent periphyton growth on the beer bottle in the culture tank with a number of new things developing.

While transferring material to seed the new tank I also got some more microscopy images. I'll process these some more to make my standard format, but here's a quick preview.

I used the edge of a forceps to scrape the living periphyton into the display, but left some on the beer bottle to maintain in the culture tank. Then I weighted them down with small limestone chips to hold in place on the sandstone outcrop slab.

Lastly I dosed with some BG-11 at a very dilute concentration, just 15ml for the whole tank. I'll add some additional ferts later, but just wanted to give them something to start off with while keeping it pretty lean.

I'll post some more microscope pics a bit later. Stay tuned!

 

[rhizotron]

Here are five distinct things I sampled from the mixed culture for microscopy while transferring material to the display tank. Photographs were captured at 100x, 250x and 2500x magnification.

I was extremely pleased to see this Chara sp. Macroalga pop up in the mixed culture. I hope I can keep this going. So cool.

I was sorry to see this bright green Green Alga with a very pretty, geometric, elkhorn branching pattern melting back in the culture tank.

Closer inspection revealed these spherical sexual reproducton structures (can somebody please help with terminology?) developing while the algal cell walls were emptied of cytoplasm.

When I saw a brown tuft developing on one area of the beer bottle I initially though it to be the benthic Diatoms I photographed a few weeks ago, but then as it grew some more it became apparent it was something else. Microscope examination revealed these brown Cyanobacterium filaments.

Look at the numerous calcite crystals apparently developing along with growth of the Cyanobacteria and Green Alga in this shot. This is a great result!

That Cyanobacterium at much higher, 2500x magnification.

A green Cyanobacterium with calcite crystals also developing among its filaments.

2500x magnification.

Lastly I also observed this second photogenic hair algae Green Alga. This stuff has been growing well in the culture tank.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Closer inspection revealed these spherical sexual reproducton structures (can somebody please help with terminology?)

I'm not entirely sure (algae sexual reproduction can take like three different forms, and I haven't looked at it too deeply yet), but I'm relatively certain those are either eggs (if unfertilized)/zygotes (if fertilized) or the oospore/oospores in the oogonium (plural is oogonia).

 

[rhizotron]

I'm not entirely sure (algae sexual reproduction can take like three different forms, and I haven't looked at it too deeply yet), but I'm relatively certain those are either eggs (if unfertilized)/zygotes (if fertilized) or the oospore/oospores in the oogonium (plural is oogonia).

Thanks. Now I can remember reading all about this in Halimeda years ago, completely gone from memory of course though.

 

[rhizotron]

Update - Day 18

Here's a quick update. There's quite a lot of this brown dusty Diatoms all over the top of the stone slab. This did not come with the field samples but was instead already growing here in a few spots before I added them. I had tried to keep substrates and the tank surfaces as clean as I could, but some of this survived and reestablished. It is smothering the Green Lake periphyton pieces a bit, but I've seen this kind of thing before and it generally grows like an early successional algae bloom in new tanks, so it should subside after a while.

I painted a couple of glass microscope slides with nail polish so I could keep track of them and added to the tank to track periphyton colonization. As far as I can see they just have the weedy Diatoms at this point, so I'll give them more time before examining.

 

[rhizotron]

Update - Day 29

Coming along!

As anticipated, the weedy pioneer Diatom is beginning to melt away. For a week or so I was dismayed to see it growing all over the periphyton material introduced to the tank, but I now see new active growth from most of the obvious things that I had added. The brown Cyanobacterium in particular has several patches tightly adhered and expanding on the stone slab top surface. Based on my culture tank observations this is one of the organisms that definitely seems to be implicated in CaCO3 biomineralization and reef formation.

Aside from the weedy Diatom, I don't see much development on the glass slides. But I will keep them in there for a while longer.

A few botanicals were added a few days ago to reinforce the idea of a Great Lakes region forest. I don't want stained water in here, so I boiled all of this material with several water changes to minimize tannins. For water surface clarity, I also nstalled an Oase CrystalSkim 350 in the back rear corner. I otherwise like the design of this device, but it directs its outflow in a downward direction, so it's awkward in a shallow tank like this one. I temporarily placed some Purigen bags (also removing tannins and other organics) and small stones beneath to absorb this energy and prevent sand from blowing around.

 

[rhizotron]

Update - Day 37

The Green Lake periphyton continues pretty nice development. There are patches of the brown Cyanobacterium with vigorous oxygen bubble generation and presumably calcium carbonate precipitation.

I added a few additional Oak leaves and Pine cones. Some patches of green around the margins of the stone slab would be nice. A lot of plant material growth would compete with the periphyton, just as they do in a planted aquarium, but I wonder about just a few small sprigs of Egeria densa or other hard water plant. I would have liked to establish the Chara macroalga in here, but the pieces in the culture tank have vanished. I don't know what the secret is to growing that stuff(?).

This setup is mainly all about the microbialite periphyton, but some hard water-adaptable livestock would be nice for more motion and activity. Here is one idea.

(Source: https://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/mississippi-grass-shrimp)

The native range for these does not quite include Green Lake, but it's close with extent into Lake Erie tributaries. Likewise not true to biotope, but a small, subdued wild-type livebearer fish, such as Heterandria formosa, could also/alternativel look good in here.

I reinstalled the ripple generator. I made a few modifications for better performance, but got kind of disappointing results. It will need more work, but at least it's up and out of the way and off my desk for now. I did come up with a few more ideas and observations while tinkering with it. The ripples create a really trippy, psychedelic mandala motion reflection on the white ceiling.

 

[KrisReef]

This is almost completely different from any ecosystem I have ever seen replicated. Thanks for the microscopic images and the FTS you have posted. Will you be tracking salt depletion along the way?

 

[rhizotron]

This is almost completely different from any ecosystem I have ever seen replicated. Thanks for the microscopic images and the FTS you have posted. Will you be tracking salt depletion along the way?

Thanks for stopping by!

That certainly would be an interesting experiment. Based on the observations in the culture tank, mineral precipitation can be significant and rapid. For now I intend to just maintain the dissolved mineral concentration using water changes and top-offs with the blended water.

 

[Johnd651]

I just came across this. We kayak up there and like to go swimming in green lake sp.

 

[Arkardios]

Your setups are always incredibly fascinating! Thank you for documenting.

 

[rhizotron]

I just came across this. We kayak up there and like to go swimming in green lake sp.

I would love to visit some day for some snorkeling and photography/video.

Do you ever visit Lake Oneida? Here is another interesting geomicrobiology question:

https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/39283/6/Dean_1970_Indexed.pdf

Most of the research I can find on this is from several decades ago. I have heard the lake has been changing through eutrophication and the boat traffic can also be pretty obnoxious.

 

[rhizotron]

Your setups are always incredibly fascinating! Thank you for documenting.

Thanks for reading!

 

[Johnd651]

I would love to visit some day for some snorkeling and photography/video.

Do you ever visit Lake Oneida? Here is another interesting geomicrobiology question:

https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/39283/6/Dean_1970_Indexed.pdf

Most of the research I can find on this is from several decades ago. I have heard the lake has been changing through eutrophication and the boat traffic can also be pretty obnoxious.

I am east of there, just below Utica. There is a lot of smaller lakes and ponds that we kayak and fish along with the Erie Canal. Big lakes near me are Otsego Lake, Canadarago Lake, and Goodyear Lake.