After the death of Gary in our ecosystem, we weren’t expecting much excitement to happen. We had a lot of daphnias, and we looked forward to seeing how crowded our jar would get, but that was all the expectations that we had. However, something unexpected did happen.
And it. was. GLORIOUS.
The story is this: We were checking out our jar as normal, and not really expecting much of a change from the previous week. Then, BAM, Kateka slammed the jar into that little ledge on the window while putting it back. Commence the freak out! Luckily nothing broke, but due to that bump, something fell from our floating fern. At first we thought it was just a leaf, but upon closer observation, we realized it was a BABY SNAIL!
What???? Gary had died weeks ago!
Since the snail is fairly grown-up at this point, we came to a conclusion that Gary probably laid eggs before he died, and the eggs must have floated up to the top where it got stuck on the floating fern and leaves of the plants. The baby must have grown up there where it’s dark colors blended in with the plant making it hard for us to have seen it.
But wait, there’s more!
In the end, we counted 5 total baby snails. We discovered these snails on May 11th, and by the time May 16th rolled around, the algae growth on the side of our jar had cleared up completely, meaning the mini-Garys have been feeding quite a bit. Hopefully there is enough food to sustain them for awhile.
Now onto our comparison. We chose The Good Boy’s ecosystem because it was the most similar, yet they had different results from ours.
As mentioned, our daphnia growth was craazy, but Gary died prematurely. In The Good Boy’s ecosystem, the daphnia are nowhere to be found--however, they have lots of baby snails. We hypothesize that the mystery pond water had the needed algae and bacteria for daphnia to thrive. Meanwhile, DI water used in TGB’s ecosphere might have lacked an essential nutrient. Our ecosphere had also been filled with algae, unlike TGB’s ecosystem, which was very clean. But, at the growth of our baby snails, the tank was clean!
Aside from the resurrection of snails and cleaning of the tank, our ecosphere is very similar to how it was last. An additional and expected event was the continuous growth of our mermaid and bacopa plants.
BONUS:
Here’s Gary 2.0 mounting the dead shell of original Gary. Slightly creepy. Mostly cute.
I'm so happy you guys ended up with baby snails!!! We didn't realize we had baby snails until they grew much larger and its pretty difficult to see with algae growth. I'm sure you have more than 5 by now since they are eating quite a bit. I found out an abundance of food makes them reproduce more... for example, our Gary with the many many snails. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI couldn't stop laughing as I read your blog post. We had the same thing happen with us too. We saw two baby snails after our snail had passed away. After our snail and daphnia died we thought that we would just have our shrimp left but lo and behold we had baby snails joining our little ecosphere family too. So glad you guys had baby snails. Luckily Teka knocked that jar. I am thinking you guys probably had crazy daphnia growth because you used Christina's pond water too. We are using Christina's pond water for our ecology research project and the daphnia growth is insane. Christina's pond water probably has the magical ingredients that daphnia seems to love. Anyways, great post! I had great fun reading it.
ReplyDeleteWow! Congrats on the gary jr's guys! We also had baby snails, and thankfully Jesse is still alive. It's crazy how you guys could have explosive daphnia growth, but ours didn;t have daphnia at all, and there are so many factors that could have contributed to this absence. Anyways, great post guys!
ReplyDeleteWe had the same thing happen where our snail died and then magically 3 babies appeared, but sadly those babies have died now too. We also had continuous growth of our mermaid and bacopa plants. I wonder if your baby snails will survive too and grow in to Gary 3.0 4.0 and 5.0 (:
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