Objective: For this lab, the objective was to successfully plan and grow a terrarium that could sustain our chosen plants and gave them a healthy environment to thrive.
Hypothesis: At the beginning, we predicted that all of our succulents and other plants would successfully survive in our homemade terrarium. We think that the they will all be able to survive in the right living conditions, especially with the sunlight from the window, the water we carefully poured in, and the nutrients from the soil.
Analysis: We kept our ecosystem in a large glass container. We put sand on the bottom, rocks as the second layer, and soil on the top. We also placed moss on the surface to help keep the plants hydrated and insulated. In our terrarium, we included an aloe vera succulent as well as a jelly bean succulent. For the moss, we used moss that we found near our homes. We used "drought resistance" as our theme. The theme was chosen because all of the plants that we put in our terrarium are good for in a drought since succulents do not require much water. Our hypothesis was that the moss would help the plants thrive by holding the water in and keeping the surrounding environment moist. It would also stabilize the plants in the soil. We also placed some worms in the terrarium to work as decomposers. The plants were the producers, and the other insects in the soil were the consumers.
There were at least three cycles taking place in the terrarium: the water cycle, the carbon cycle, and the nitrogen.cycle. First was the water cycle. Whenever we watered the terrarium, the water would first soak through the layers down to the bottom. Then it would slowly evaporate from the bottom, going back through the soil, and out of the top. The plants would absorb the water, causing them to transpire some of the water. Next is the carbon cycle. The plants would absorb the sunlight and undergo a process called photosynthesis. The plants would then produce oxygen that could be absorbed by the earthworms. The plant would also produce glucose that the other organisms could eat to gain energy. If the plants and animals died, they would decompose and be absorbed in to the ground and add to the geosphere. The final cycle is the nitrogen cycle. Plants absorb nitrogen from the atmosphere and then expel ammonia in to our terrarium. The bacteria in our terrarium would convert the ammonia into nitrates. Other proteins would thrive off of the nitrates and the organisms would have more nutrients to attain.
On the left we have our starting terrarium / On the right we have our terrarium after fiveweeks
Observations: Week 1: We built our terrarium and planted the plants. In doing so, we watered them a lot. Only the moss had grown so far Week 2: We planted the succulents, the jade plants, etc. and watered the terrarium more. The moss is slowly getting greener Week 3: The moss is growing at a steady rate, but some of its rich color is fading. The other plants are still flourishing Week 4: This is Thanksgiving Break, so we took it home, but some of the plants are slowly dying because some days we forgot to water it. The moss has lost a lot more of its color Week 5: Since we did not water it a lot over the break, we watered it a little bit more when we brought it back to school to try and bring the plants back to a livelier state