October 24

Dear Dr. Brian

10/24/11

Dear Dr. Brian,

We’re writing you to tell you what we have found from our brine shrimp studies. We have enjoyed working with the shrimp. We have some good and bad news for you.

We took some cups with 150 ml of water and placed different amounts of salt in them. We placed a mini scoop of brine shrimp in each cup. Then we observed to see how they would live and grow.

First, the good news is we found that brine shrimp did very well in cups with 2-4 scoops (5ml) of salt per 150ml of water. So, the range of tolerance was 2-4 scoops of salt per 150 ml of water. The optimum, or best, level was 2 scoops of salt per 150ml of water.

The bad news is the cups with 0 scoops of salt and 6 scoops had no brine shrimp eggs hatch. So this means you have a serious problem if the water level goes down and the salinity continues to go up.

One more bit of good news is that eggs that didn’t hatch in cups with 0 and 6 scoops were found to be viable if the salinity was changed. So, maybe it’s not too late to make things better at Mono Lake.

Sincerely,

Mr. Magill and The Portable People

PS What are your thoughts about our viablility findings?


Posted October 24, 2011 by magillbr in category Environments

7 thoughts on “Dear Dr. Brian

  1. magillbr (Post author)

    I think the brine shrimp are dead when they are motionless. Remember that they eat plankton. So, they’re not able to thrive in the experimental environment for very long without food. They will eventually die in the name of science.

  2. magillbr (Post author)

    I think you mean edible Kaitlin. I don’t know if people eat brine shrimp; however, lots of other animals will eat them. The pet stores carry frozen brine shrimp that can be used to feed tropical fish like our guppies. Also, don’t forget the birds of Mono Lake. They depend on them.

  3. gabe35

    Dear Mr. Magill,
    I wonder if brine shrimp taste like chicken because regular shrimp do.
    Gabe

  4. Alyisha

    Mr. Magill
    Is Farmer John even real, because last time you said Dr.Brian was real, and she wasn’t. The picture of the little kid does not look like Famer John. If its real, tell him he’s really short. Also, tell him his crops did live. At least some of them did.
    From: Alyisha.

  5. magillbr (Post author)

    Alyisha,
    Can you tell me more about which crops lived and which did not? I think this could be great information to share with Farmer John. Thanks.
    Mr. Magill

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