Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

If you're really interested in fish but INTEL Science fair rules strongly discourage anything to do with vertebrates, what do you do? MIght consider testing water quality in nearby lakes to determine which is the best habitat for fish. What things would need to be looked at to determine this and is this a feasible idea "monetarily"?

Thanks,
Fish Enthusiast

You can try using invertebrates such as mulluscs and other aquatic animals as well as plants that could be expected to live in the environments studied. Even less expensive and good for quicker experiments would be to use microorganisms such as bacteria, algae, and protozoans.

Even using baker's yeast might be useful. Put a balloon on the culture tube and measure its size over time to measure general toxicity of a wide range of water samples.

Hi there,

It's true that ISEF discourages working with vertebrate animals. However, I want to clarify that it is definitely an option. I did mouse work when I was in high school, and while it took more paperwork, it was definitely doable. I would suggest that if you want to work with vertebrate animals, you set up a collaboration with a university lab that can ensure the animals are being treated appropriately. That is the main concern. If you can't do that, then stick with invertebrates.

I like the idea of your project and see two ways of approaching the same problem. One approach involves looking at how well a given organism (a plant, microbe, etc) can survive in different water samples. An opposite approach is to look the composition of the water samples themselves. You can observe oxygen content, microbe content, pH, etc. It all depends on which question interests you more. Both types of experiments should be informative and cost-effective to perform.

If you're more interested in water composition, make sure to add a hypothesis-driven element for your students. For example, let's say you find a correlation with low pH and fewer plants in a given lake. If you take the same water and adjust the pH, can you increase the number of plants that could survive in the water? Of course, you can't change the pH of the entire lake, but you could do this experimentally and look at microbe survival (like baker's yeast, a great model organism), or plant growth.

If any of this is unclear, please don't hesitate to post more questions.

Best of luck,
Linh

Dear LBonthenet,

I think you have some great advice posted here.

Your water quality testing suggestion is probably the best approach. Using plants, aquatic organisms, or even yeast is risky. The reason is that lakes or oceans, for that matter, are essentially living organisms in themselves. Not to sound like the FernGully, but there are a million things going on in water chemistry that allow plants and fish, etc. to survive-not just what is in the water at that moment you take it out for sampling. Ideally, you could check for oxygen content, erosion wear, bacteria, sediment, and a host of other stuff in the multiple water samples you can obtain. Unless you have a system in place that allows you to maintain an equilibrium allowing your fish or plant or yeast to live at a certain condition, you are probably better off just pulling down numbers from various samples.

On the other hand, if you know of any potential or known environmental problems related to the lakes around you, then there may be something of interest to explore. For example, is the lake man-made? Is the lake next to an industrial complex, commericial complex, or residential zone? Is it fished regularly for sport? The addition of a relevant situation to the surrounding community juxtaposed to your interest in fish and water quality can coax out a very relevant hypothesis and a very interesting study for this competition. Please reply if there are more questions.

Best,

James

Hi there,
another option may be to analyse data that already exists. Lots of data is taken for fish migration in the Columbia River on the border of Wa and Or.

Have a look at what is out there and see if it gives you any ideas.

http://www.fpc.org/fpc_homepage.html

Jim