Began new larval culling protcol; prepped growth exp larvae for imaging; collected new larvae; water change on growth exp.

It’s a Saturday, it’s beautiful, and no one is here. I decided to move my lab bench outside:

New larval bucket protocol

After seeing high mortality in my 180um larvae this week I decided that I need to cull this group as well. Up until this point I have always separated size classes for the SN & NF groups into two buckets, 100um and 180um, then connected them and allowed all live larvae in the 100um bucket to flow forward to “marry” with the 180um group. This protocol was developed as suggested by PSRF, as mortality rates in >180 tend to be much lower than 100um. This, however, resulted in me never culling the 180um for NF & SN. Today, I moved all the 180um larvae from the front bucket into the back bucket, as to allow all live larvae in both size classes to flow forward. This will be my protocol moving forward. NOTE: this new protocol has been in place for the K & HL group already, since I didn’t have enough materials to split size classes. It’s possible that the lower mortality in those groups are a result of this method.

Prepped growth exp. larvae for imaging

Yesterday I fixed the larvae in ethanol after moving them to tubes and removing as much seawater as possible. Today I imaged them. To do so, I transferred the larvae back to their respective wells, pulled off the supernatant (mostly ethanol, had some cloudy floating gunk in it), and then added 0.5mL fresh 200proof ethanol back. I did not image today, left that for Grace on 6/26.

Water change on SN growth exp

I forgot to write down the algae strains, but I do know it was 50/50 mix of a flagellate and diatom

Collected new larvae

Spawning has dramatically reduced, and checking for new larvae has become a bit more tedious. I collected the following groups… HL6 AMBIENT NF6 AMBIENT B NF10 AMBIENT A SN6 AMBIENT A NF10 LOW B SN10 LOW B NF6 LOW A SN10 AMBIENT B …but there was only larvae in