Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi
I'm doing my project on aquarium environment. I have three tanks and they are all .5 gallons. I have a goldfish in each one of them and I have a water wisteria, a green acrus, and a red ludwigia each one of them. One of them has sand one of them has gravel one of them have rocks and the other one has nothing. I am trying to see which one succeeds by keeping the fish and plants alive the best.my hypothesis is that the sand will be the best because it has a lot of nutrients that the fish can feed on.

How can my experiment be improved
What do you think will happen
Do you think my hypothesis is right
Do you think thatI should keep the goldfish in the tanks because I don't think I am harming the fish in any way


Thanks-Shaheer

Hi,

Welcome to Science Buddies!

It sounds like you have designed a well controlled experiment. All of the conditions are the same, except the composition of the material on the bottom of the fish tanks. Your hypothesis is good. One question I have is how are you going to measure your results? Can you measure the plants and quantitatively evaluate the goldfish? With science projects, it’s best to have a measurable result.

As long as you are feeding the goldfish and taking optimum care of them, you will not harm them. However, goldfish are vertebrate animals, so you do need to follow the rules for working with vertebrates:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... mals.shtml

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


Donna Hardy

Thanks for the reply,

But I still have a couple more questions. At the end of the project should I compare the ph concentration of each water.mand the last question is how can I improve my project

Thanks-Shaheer

Hi Shaheer,

I’m sorry I was not clear. Your experiment is perfectly good, but you should consider measuring additional dependent variables if you want to improve the experiment.

If your hypothesis is that the sand will be best for the plants and for the goldfish, then you need to measure dependent variables that will reflect the health status of both the plants and the fish. pH is a good measurement because both plants and animals have optimum pH values.

However, what if the pH of all 3 tanks is in the optimum range? Then it would be good to have other measurements. Can you think of a way to measure the growth of the algae? What about the oxygen content of the water? What about ammonia? Is there any way to measure health and happiness of a goldfish?

When is your project due? Do you have time to conduct your experiment twice? Or, can you get additional fish tanks? Duplicate results are always great when doing science fair projects.

And another possible improvement. With any experiment, you want to keep all other conditions constant. So you could consider documenting the temperature, light, amount of food added to the tank, etc. to verify that other parameters are controlled. And, you can also include detailed observations of your experiment.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you still have questions.


Donna Hardy

Thanks for your reply,

Your reply helped me a lot and its easier to understand my experiment now.

The date of the science fair is March 7th. I have a limited amount of time. I need to finish 2-3 days before march 7th. I need time to glue the research papers to my board . I will measure the ammonia and pH . I have a question, how can I measure the amount of algae ?

Thanks-Shaheer

Hi Shaheer,

If you are measuring pH and ammonia, you will have results of two parameters to graph, which will make a very good display board. With your limited time available, I would not worry too much about adding an additional measurement if it will interfere with the rest of the project. However, if you are growing single celled algae, you can count them in a hemocytometer. If you are growing plants, you should be able to measure growth in centimeters during the time you have available.

Definitely plan to stop a few days before the display boards are due to ensure that you are able to do a complete job on communicating your results.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... oard.shtml

Please post again if you have more questions.

Donna Hardy