saltwater differences? swimming in acid:understanding ocean

[pugpops]

hi there, i'm new to sciencebuddies.org and have a question about the project: Swimming in Acid: Understanding Ocean Acidification. To do this project, it says to make your own saltwater by using Ocean Mix products, etc. if i have a saltwater aquarium fish tank at my house, can i just take out some of that water and use it for this project instead of mixing the Ocean Mix with regular tap water? thanks!

[donnahardy2]

Hi,

Welcome to Science Buddies! I think you are doing this excellent project from the Science Buddies website:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p013.shtml''

You can use any source of ocean water for this project. If there are no fish in the aquarium, then you could definitely use the aquarium water. However, if there are fish and plants established in the fish tank, I would be concerned about disturbing their equilibrium. Where did the water in the aquarium come from?

If you are close to an ocean, you could collect your water samples from the ocean.

The source of the water for this experiment if one of your controlled parameters, so should be identical for all of your samples.

Please post again in this topic if you have more questions.

Donna Hardy