Since we’ve been collecting all this water chemistry data I thought it’d be nice to share a bit of it. Here you can see the nitrate and nitrate levels in Coral Pond #1 over a couple of weeks. Levels start out low, then rise in the newly established system right up until inoculation with an stable microbial community. At that point the nitrites head back down quickly and the nitrates continue to rise. So question for the undergrads on the project: Is this what we expect or not? Why would we see this pattern?
Jonathan Eisen's Lab 