You see that little guy in there?
That's a baby brine shrimp.
That means that they've actually reproduced.
Wonderful!
Alright everyone, welcome back to Cody's lab!
Today we're going to be looking at this once again.
So in my last video i was amused at the possibility of the shrimp in this box being able to survive out in deep space,
and so naturally the most popular comment was to test it out.
So...
Here we are in the vacuum chamber,
and we're going to see if this box can protect the shrimp,
inside of the vacuum.
I have tested a similar box inside the vacuum chamber and that one survived so, I'm fairly certain this will
be able to handle it.
[pump sounds]
So there we have it, the shrimp are now officially space shrimp.
They are inside of the vacuum chamber as you can see on
the mercury gauge that the pressure has now reached a near vacuum and uh,
the shrimp are still swimming around in their little box
completely unaware of the outside conditions having changed.
[laugh]
This is really cool so this thing would actually be able to survive in space if
it had some sort of radiation shield.
[sound of air coming into the chamber]
Yep, the seal is intact, it didn't leak.
I wouldn't expect it to because that's solid acrylic
and a cork.
[laugh]
The shrimp in the glass box is actually not my first self-contained eco-system.
In the back of this truck here is actually one of my first methane-generator experiments.
I filled this up with cow manure
and let it compost,
and I was actually getting gas off of it,
but at the end of the experiment when it stopped producing gas,
I ended up leaving some of the material in there
mostly because it wouldn't all come out,
and there must have been some seeds or something
because it grew grass,
as you can see.
Now,
this thing has been rarely opened and never watered
in about ten years now.
Let's have a look down in there.
So it's the middle of winter, so the grass isn't really
you know, all that green.
But as you can see there's quite a lot of biomass in here
and
there is a little bit of green grass down there,
and it's coming back from the winter.
So yeah, a self-contained eco-system right here.
It's probably some fungus or bacteria breaking down the grass
over time producing more CO2,
and the CO2 is converted via photosynthesis back into grass.
So
there you go
I'm not sure if i'm going to keep this thing going, but
at this point
maybe I should.
It's already been sitting here for ten years.
Theoretically it could go forever as long as you got an energy source
right there.
I did do a video on this tank about two or three years ago.
We've got plants still growing.
A lot of you guys wanted to see how I put together the box and so I'll be making another one.
A few changes I will make though is I'm using a slightly wider box:
this has a larger internal volume, and therefore I can fit more biomass inside of it.
And another thing I am gonna change is that instead of drilling through the glass with this diamond hole saw like I did last time,
I'm just going to try using this carbide spade bit
because I don't think the hole needed quite so large.
So, here we go.
We've got the spot marked; let's drill through.
[drilling noises]
I'm just going really slow,
grind through the glass.
[drilling noises]
There we are.
[drilling noises]
Touched through.
It's good, nice little hole.
So the next thing I'm going to do is mix up the brine solution that the shrimp will be living in.
So I'm going to measure out some salt—this is a tablespoon measure—
and normally for like when raising brine shrimp, they go for around 25 parts per mil., so that would be around 4 of these
tablespoon measures into this two liters of water,
but I'm going to go quite a bit higher than that because I want to significantly reduce the freezing point of the water,
which means I'm going to go up to around 60 per mil. on the salinity.
So, that's four—
now I'm gonna do
about five more.
And five.
Now, this is just ordinary, iodized table salt
I mean, the iodine's probably not super great for the shrimp, but it won't hurt 'em.
Okay, so next I'm going to add some epsom salt.
This is to provide them a source of magnesium
And I'm just going to add in
about that much.
Okay.
Next, I'm going to add in about the same amount
of calcium chloride.
Actually, you know what, I'm going to add about two of those.
So that's two teaspoons of calcium chloride in there.
So that's about one per liter.
I'm going to add some baking soda.
Now, this will react with the calcium chloride to form calcium carbonate
Of course, the calcium chloride will also react with the epsom salts
to form calcium sulfate.
Those are both insoluble, but
they are still important things to have in the solution for the shrimp.
So, I'm going to add
one teaspoon
of baking soda.
There we go.
There's your carbonate.
So now:
I'm just going to add some water,
and then we're going to put it inside the block.
Now that all this is mixed up, the salt is dissolved,
but you can still see the solution is quite cloudy
because of the calcium carbonate suspension.
So while the calcium carbonate is still suspended in the liquid,
I'm going to pour this into the block.
So, here we go.
This'll probably take a little while.
I almost forgot, but
I am also adding in some potash.
This is some potassium chloride,
and I'm just going to set this in the funnel
and let it dissolve in.
Because all plants and animals need potassium.
While I'm at it, I think I'm going to add in a pinch of potassium nitrate
just to boost the quantity of nitrates
and just a few drops of phosphoric acid
to boost the phosphorus levels.
I didn't do this on the last one, but
I don't see why it would hurt
In fact, that's going to really cause
basically an algae bloom
[laugh]
which is kind of exactly what I want.
And now it's time for the biology:
you see, this small tank right here
has got algae and all sorts of stuff growing in it,
and I'm going to use this as my algae starter
for the shrimp
as their food source.
I'm going to take some of the algae off of the bottom
along with some of the sand,
and then I'm going to transfer it
into
the box.
So here's my algae starter,
and I'm going to put this
right in there.
And now as a source of carbon,
I'm going to add in some
moss here.
On the last one I used grass,
but I think the moss is going to look better.
And
the whole idea here is that this will provide
not only the micronutrients that everything needs,
but also a source of bulk carbon
so that it is slowly released
and can be used as the main source of biomass in the system.
Alright, so it's finally time for the final ingredient:
some brine shrimp eggs.
Now, these are taken from the Great Salt Lake,
intended for use as fish food, but
they will still grow, and
well, they are the same species that's living in the lake.
So let's just take
a little bit of this—
that's actually probably way too many shrimp—
but not all of them will live,
and if there's too many they will kill each other,
as I've seen in the other box.
So let's just sprinkle a few of those in there
just like that,
and it's colonized.
Give her a bit of a shake
and mix them in with the water.
Just for giggles,
let's wash the remaining brine shrimp eggs out of the funnel
using a little bit of deuterium oxide
or heavy water.
This ought to
really screw with any researchers
that decide to do a
isotopic analysis of what's inside here.
[laugh]
Yeah, that will have significantly increased
the deuterium content of the
box here.
Now, to seal it,
I first need to rough up the glass with some sandpaper
so that the
epoxy resin will stick.
This time, instead of a cork
I'm actually going to start with a little bit of silicone.
Now this is just to keep the
acrylic from flowing down into the chamber before it cures,
but this is actually a pretty good seal on its own.
Now it's time for the two-part epoxy resin.
That there's really all it needs.
So, here we are.
With any luck, in about
a month or so
this will be a thriving, self-sustained ecosystem
just like this one over here.
I will be providing another update video on these,
and hopefully by then I'll have several more made
and possibly like a little
window-frame thing built.
I was thinking an east-facing window like this one right here
would be really good
because it doesn't get direct sunlight for most of the day
but it still gets plenty of light.
Yeah, just have some of these blocks
sitting in there,
going up.
Instead of this frosted glass, it would be glass blocks full of life.
I think the next ones I'm going to build, though
are not going to be so much liquid.
They're going to be more like
a box with a little bit of moss and maybe some grass growing in it.
Because the grass and moss are not quite so sensitive.
I mean, the shrimp:
I'm still expecting them to just all die out one day,
and when they do,
I doubt all life in the box will cease to exist—
it'll probably just be some bacterial takeover,
but that'll be interesting to see.
Definitely if that happens I'm not going to try recolonizing it or anything.
But for now it looks like it's doing rather well.
You can see most of the shrimp are down here
enjoying a meal of algae.
So, yeah.
The whole cycle, everything is totally working.
Hopefully, this one will do it just as well.
That little shrimp is actually like playing with that oxygen bubble right there.
That's cool.
Anyway,
hope you all enjoyed; I'll see you next time.