What am I up to now?
The usual
I was looking into going smaller to get more percision for O2 and CO2 probes, using micro probes used in medical fields and critters and cell Bio mostly..........
These use a flow through chamber, you do not need much water either, a few hundred microliters.............
I can/could use a large tip pipette to withdraw a sample anywhere in the aquarium, even right at the leaf surface, at the outflow of the CO2 diffuser, inside the plant beds, I would not be limited by reponse time either.
The sample is flowed through these micro chambers and there's no escape(muhahaha!). I can also measure O2 as well.
So if I wanted to measure something interesting: measure the CO2 and O2 levels right before the lights come on, and then once every 1 hour till the lights go off and then for another 2 hours after. Or just over a typical 24 peroid etc, say at the leaf, right above the leaf, at the CO2 diffuser/reactor, inside the gas bubble in the reactor etc, in the plant beds, right below the surface of the aquarium, measure differences in O2 demand/CO2 demand for a particular plant species.
Lots of neat measures could be made. Even inside cells, at root tips etc.
See how much O2 the root puts out in the Rhizosphere and measure the distance of root influence etc.
Nice thing is the you only need a small volume of liquid and then you can take it quickly and then measure later vs waiting for a CO2 probe to take it's sweet time getting around to stablizing etc.
You can measure O2 production at the leaf surface during the day and how much gets dissolved as you incrrease distances, the reverse for CO2 etc.
Even at the microscale.
Measuring the light is straight forward. Measuring nutrients is easy. Measuring sediments is relatively easy(for me anyway). Gas is the tricky sucker.
I suppose I could nab those microbubbles, then allow them to equilibrate and measure the liquid inside a sealed jar.
Then see what is really inside the bubbles.
Many options.
Have I gone off the deep end?
Perhaps, as far the hobby goes, but as far testing and setting something up to measure ideas? Nope.
CO2 and O2 are where most of the unknown issues are, we can measure the rest realtively cheap and easy.
Regards,
Tom Barr
The usual
I was looking into going smaller to get more percision for O2 and CO2 probes, using micro probes used in medical fields and critters and cell Bio mostly..........
These use a flow through chamber, you do not need much water either, a few hundred microliters.............
I can/could use a large tip pipette to withdraw a sample anywhere in the aquarium, even right at the leaf surface, at the outflow of the CO2 diffuser, inside the plant beds, I would not be limited by reponse time either.
The sample is flowed through these micro chambers and there's no escape(muhahaha!). I can also measure O2 as well.
So if I wanted to measure something interesting: measure the CO2 and O2 levels right before the lights come on, and then once every 1 hour till the lights go off and then for another 2 hours after. Or just over a typical 24 peroid etc, say at the leaf, right above the leaf, at the CO2 diffuser/reactor, inside the gas bubble in the reactor etc, in the plant beds, right below the surface of the aquarium, measure differences in O2 demand/CO2 demand for a particular plant species.
Lots of neat measures could be made. Even inside cells, at root tips etc.
See how much O2 the root puts out in the Rhizosphere and measure the distance of root influence etc.
Nice thing is the you only need a small volume of liquid and then you can take it quickly and then measure later vs waiting for a CO2 probe to take it's sweet time getting around to stablizing etc.
You can measure O2 production at the leaf surface during the day and how much gets dissolved as you incrrease distances, the reverse for CO2 etc.
Even at the microscale.
Measuring the light is straight forward. Measuring nutrients is easy. Measuring sediments is relatively easy(for me anyway). Gas is the tricky sucker.
I suppose I could nab those microbubbles, then allow them to equilibrate and measure the liquid inside a sealed jar.
Then see what is really inside the bubbles.
Many options.
Have I gone off the deep end?
Perhaps, as far the hobby goes, but as far testing and setting something up to measure ideas? Nope.
CO2 and O2 are where most of the unknown issues are, we can measure the rest realtively cheap and easy.
Regards,
Tom Barr
