Ecosphere Blog Post By The Dream Team

By: Matthew Heinekin, Ivanna de Anda, Nhy Tran

Ecosphere Ingredients:

• Pond water
• 200 ml of Nutrients
• Tap water
• Bacopa (2x)
• Water Sprite
• Daphnia (20x)
• Volvox globator
• Stentor
• Euglena acus
• Anabeana
• Aquatic floating fern
• Snail
• Soil
• Sand
• Gravel
• Straw

Figure 1.  The Dream Teams amazing Ecosphere with Daphnia and the Snail.

Our initial predictions upon finishing the construction of our Ecosphere was that it would persist, grow, and even flourish. As it turns out our predictions were correct, The quantity of daphnia has increased exponentially as well as the size of them. Not only did the daphnia get bigger, but the aquatic floating fern grew, as well as the othertwo plants that was introduced into the ecosphere. We feel that by adding a good amount of soil first and then straw, that was the key to grow an amazing ecosphere. we also used both sand and gravel in order to keep the dirt and ay from just floating around in the water and making it dirty. At one point during the past week or so, we noticed a thin clear white layer on the floor of the Ecosphere. As we discussed it over with each other, we concluded that it must have been some sort of fungi growing.

Figure 2. Close up on the ecosystem and the Snail.

Types of metabolism for each organism:

Aquatic Floating Fern - photosynthesis and cellular respiration

Water Sprite - photosynthesis and cellular respiration

Bacopa - photosynthesis and cellular respiration

Anabaena- autotrophic

Selenastrum Capricornutum - autotrophic

Volvox Globator - autotrophic

Stentor- autotrophic

Snail- heterotrophic

Euglena acus- photosynthetic

Expectations:

As the weeks progress, we feel that our Ecosphere will continue to thrive without any issues. Based on what the ecosphere was composed of, we believe that there will be enough nutrients and food sources for all the organisms that live within it.