Designing, building, and testing experimental microcosms are essential to conducting accurate and precise experiments. With completely new equipment, sometimes the most difficult task is getting it to fit together and work properly. In this pilot study, we built and tested a new experimental aquatic microcosm system. We conducted a brief, 2 week study with the main goals of 1) assessing the microcosm system was working properly and keeping fish alive and 2) investigating the effect temperature had on juvenile southern redbelly dace growth (weight, total length).