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Eleanor, Kate, Taylor and Sara June 5, 2009 Today we discussed what we are going to do for our presentation.

June 2, 2009 We decided for our presentation we are going to speak about the effects of the environments on our tadpoles and show our video posted below.

June 1, 2009 Today we are working on our presentation.

May 26, 2009 Over the three day weekend, both of the tadpoles lived!!!! And they're looking quite big, though sadly there is no sign of legs yet. The snail eggs still haven't hatched and we're hoping that they'll hatch soon, at least before the last day of school. We did some research and discovered that it takes a couple of weeks for them to hatch, and that there is a 50% survival rate of the eggs. All though we're worried because it says they take over the tanks, and we're not sure what we're going to do with the 20 something snails that will get produced. We don't want to kill them, and we're not really supposed to let them go into the wild because it will destroy some eco-systems. So we are still debating that problem... In other news both of the environments are really dirty, so we decided to clean them out. We're not going to do it as much as before, and take out all of the rocks but we will switch the water. We're also going to research some tadpole sicknesses to see what happened to the normal tadpole. We're also going to do research on the snails, to see when they will hatch.

May 21, 2009 Today we are working on our podcast. media type="file" key="tadpole radio.mp3"

May 19, 2009 The normal tadpole died today. He's been sick for about week and we were surprised that he didn't die earlier. We think that the light one is the best now.

May 16, 2009 We put the normal tadpole in the light too because it's sick and we can start to see it's insides. We hope it will get better soon. We started to look up diseases but have no idea

May 15, 2009 We are editing the videos today.

May 14, 2009 Today is cleaning day! We did a major cleaning, we washed the rocks and took out the plants. Now they are very clean, but not for very long. We have a feeling that the normal and the dark tadpoles are on their last fin :( They are floating to the top on their stomachs slowly and then going back down. On a better note, the snails layed their eggs on the sides of the jars. The eggs are looking bigger and fuller.

May 11, 2009 Thankfully all of the tadpoles and snails lived, so from now on we're going to leave them here over the weekend!! There hasn't been much changes, the tadpoles in each environment look the same as before. Hephaestus is still the runt, and the other two are about the same size. We're not sure how long it should take for them to change to frogs. We thought before about 4-5 weeks, but that means that right now, week three, they should have legs and they don't. So we're crossing our fingers that they will change before the last day of school. The snails with the babies haven't had much change either, and again we're not sure how long it should take for the babies to 'hatch.' We're hoping that they will pretty soon. Chart: -Most developed || -Smallest (The runt) -Least developed || - Almost as big as light environment. - More developed than Normal, less developed than Light. ||
 * Differences: || Light Environment || Normal Environment || Dark Environment ||
 * Tadpole growth: || -Biggest
 * Snail growth: || - Biggest || -The same as dark || -The same as normal ||
 * Cleanness of ‘tanks’: || - Always the cleanest || - Always the dirtiest, it needs to be cleaned the more than the other two. || - It’s not super dirty, yet it’s not super clean. ||
 * Reproduction: || -The snails get pregnant more, and get bigger when they are pregnant. || - Small pregnant snails, and don’t get pregnant as much. || - Get pregnant the least. ||
 * Behavior of tadpoles: || - The most active || - Sometimes REALLY hyper, other times very relaxed. || - The most depressed, always near the bottom ||

~End of Week Two~

May 8, 2009 We decided not to take the risk of taking the tadpoles home, instead we are going to leave them at school with lots of extra food. We'll see which works better, and next weekend we'll decide which way will be best for the tadpoles/ snails. Hopefully they'll make it until Monday. In other news all the snails are growing, even the one's without the babies!! We noticed that the biggest of all the snails is located the the light environment, and the snails located in the black environment are the smallest. We also noticed that the tadpole in the light environment is biggest, but the tadpole in the normal environment is the most energetic. The tadpole in the dark environment is the most slow moving.

May 7, 2009 Today we cleaned the tanks, fun! We have seen a lot of development with the baby snails. They are still attached to their parents shell in the eggs. It is easy to see each snail as little circles within the egg-sack. We have probably six snails with eggs, 2 in each environment. We have noticed that the baby snails in the light environment are bigger, more developed.

May 4, 2009 Over the weekend, one tadpole from each environment died =( We figured out that the snails in the light reproduce more quickly. We decided to put the snails back in their original environments because they reproduce so quickly that it won't matter and we need them the eat the waste. the tadpole in the light seems to be more developed than the others. Also the light may help the algae grow faster. The tanks have gotten so nasty we now have to clean the tank every Monday and Thursday.

Here is a link to a website with a detailed explanation of the life cycle of a frog =) [|Life Cycle of a Frog] As you can see, the frogs start as eggs and then develop in to tadpoles and start to grow legs as seen above. Then once they are frogs they need to go to land and then they continue to grow into frogs!

~End of week one~

May 1, 2009 We got some plants from outside to put in the jars. We are also practicing our script for the podcast we are going to record later. I have been working most of the class on the video we will be posting soon!

April 30, 2009 - Eleanor's bday!

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One of our snails may be pregnant. We took her out of the environment so the eggs don't get eaten. We saw what seemed to be be air bubbles on the surface of her shell. We looked it up and found, " Ramshorn snails lay their eggs in translucent globules that usually contain about a dozen eggs or so. Because of the translucency of the globules, it is possible to actually see new snails, which are a clear, white color, developing in size" ([|Fish-Tank-Guide.com] ) We will see what happens and keep you posted.

I posted the video we made last class above. Today we cleaned the jars and took a video. We observed that the tadpoles that are in the light are more lively and go to the light and move more. The tadpoles in the dark seem to be "sleeping" and don't move around much. We decided against the algae and want to see if we can get water plants to go in the environments.

We post our videos soon!

April 28, 2009 Today Kate brought in her jar. We cleaned and filled her jar and added the cleaner. We let the water settle for a while then we added the tadpole sand snails. We are unable to get more tadpoles and decided to eliminate the colored light idea. But other than that, everything is going according to plan. Today we started our documentation and will post our first video here. We will make a comparison chart, update it and post it here soon as well.

April 27, 2009 Over the weekend we got tadpoles and snails. Unfortunately, one of the tadpoles died when we got it. So now we have to replace it. Taylor and I brought our ecosystems in today. We finally decided what environments to do. Instead of what we said below, we are going to do a dark one, a light one (a lamp shining on it consistently), a normal one (light at day, dark at night) and one with a colored light (a lamp with a colored light bulb shining on it consistently). Today we covered my environment in paper to keep the jar dark all the time. Taylor has the normal environment so we do not need to change hers. Tomorrow Sarah and Kate will bring in their jars so we can start changing theirs as well.

Our Hypothesis: We believe that the light environment will be the most successful in the development process. We believe this because the light may help grow algae for food. The light may help by keeping the temperature warmer and may be a better environment for the tadpoles.

Our plan: We will all bring the tadpoles and snails home on Thursday or Friday nights for the weekend and back to school on Monday mornings. Friday we will plan for the week and post a reflection of the growth and progress we have had so far. We are going to feed each tadpole 3 food pellets everyday at 2:30. Each ecosystem will start with 2 tadpoles, 1 big snail, 3 small snails, plants and algae. We will change water in all of them at the same time when needed.

April 23, 2009 Today we finished our proposal and posted it to moodle and started this wiki. We called a couple of pet supply stores and plan on getting 8 tadpoles tomorrow after school. We agreed on 4 different environments, a dark, a light, a warm and a food-coloring one. We started to bring in materials and will bring in more on Monday.