Aquarium Biology Science Experiments

[gardenman]

Methods to more effectively use CO2 might be interesting. There are seemingly countless numbers of diffusers out there of various types, styles, and designs. The glass diffusers largely get used the most, but there are the old ladder styles where the CO2 bubbles crisscross a series of angled platforms on their way to the surface. There is/were a few spiral variants of that. You could try inverted jars filled with CO2. There are ball filled CO2 reactors where the gas bubbles hit the balls to slow their rise and even have little pockets in the balls to trap some gas briefly to lengthen it's exposure time to the water. There are inline CO2 injectors also. 

Doing something with CO2 could let you explain the many commercial uses of and creation of CO2. Every bottle/can of soda the kids open releases CO2. (It's the carbon in carbonated dinks. The alcohol in alcoholic drinks comes from the fermentation of sugars and the byproduct is CO2. The bubbles in champagne, the foam in beer, are caused by CO2.You could explain the role of CO2 in plants both aquatic and land-based. Many commercial greenhouse operations inject CO2 directly into their greenhouses. (Often enough so that workers need to wear respirators while working in the greenhouses.) Every loaf of bread has released a lot of CO2 from the yeast in the rising process. You could build simple CO2 producing units from a 2 liter soda bottle and bit of yeast, water, baking soda, and sugar to use in the testing process. Or you could get some dry ice and demonstrate how it's just frozen CO2 and how much more volume it requires when it thaws. A small chunk of dry ice in an empty, sealed weather balloon could be interesting to watch the balloon expand as the dry ice melts and becomes a gas again. One pound of dry ice is 8.3 cubic feet of CO2 in gaseous form.

If you're handy with a glue gun and crafting you can even make the various diffusion devices. A simple ladder type diffuser is easy to slap together. Even the spiral ones aren't difficult to fabricate using say a water bottle as a form and gluing some clear tubing around the outside of the bottle. You could demonstrate the absorption of the CO2 by using images of the CO2 bubble entering the diffuser and then leaving it. If the duffuser is working the bubble should get smaller as it moves up the diffuser to the surface as more of the CO2 is absorbed. (Though water pressure could also affect that a bit.) Bubble counters would let you monitor the flow of CO2 to keep it similar across experiments.

CO2 is largely being made into a villain these days, but it has many, many commercial uses and is produced in vast quantities for those commercial uses.

[Sol]

@KoolFish97 email would be just fine! If you could just send a message to theturtlegirl01@gmail.com and put "aquarium science experiment" or something like that in the subject line, we can get in touch. That way you don't have to put your email out here 🙂

Using stems is a great idea... totally didn't think of that! So excited to get this rolling. I got my ammonium chloride in the mail yesterday and will be ordering the plants (and a fresh test kit) today.

I'll start a new thread in photos/journals once I get all my materials. Hopefully you guys will have a fun time following along and can give me some good critical feedback 😉

[Sol]

So not to resurrect this or anything, but thought I'd share my final video presentation with you all.

I initially hoped to keep a journal on the forum, but that just did not work out ahah! Life and school gets in the way sometimes 😛 In any case, it was a bit of a let down (and man, I'm not that great at running experiments) as I did not get to run the experiment as long as I had hoped, nor did I have conclusive results. I think in the end, my biggest downfall was tiny water volume and not enough time (plus stagnant water...that probably affected it as well lol). I did, however, learn what I would change for next time in order to actually make this more effective. And I learned that I should probably spend more time preparing and planning out experiments like this, but when you're a busy student, you do what you can! I'd love your constructive feedback, but please don't be too harsh as I'm an absolute noob when it comes to this type of stuff...I just try to sound smart lol. (idk if you can tell but I have no idea what I'm doing hahaha... yeesh I feel super self conscious about putting this out since I feel like it's kind of bad in the scientific method department but oh well. Y'all seem nice enough not to judge me 😅)

[KoolFish97]

First up. Well done congratulations getting through it and getting work done on it. I know its always a challenge and pushes you when you design and make your own science experiment

Dont forget in turth this was a pilot study! We all have grand plans for success and getting world changing results but this is what is called a pilot study you tested out the idea to see in the end how could it be done better to get meaningful results! I can see that so much of it made a lot of sense and was done well. Sadly sometimes simple things which you a. Didnt have time for or b. Could obtain may have made it better!

All of your improvments you listed i agreed with! But 2 obvious ones are obviously more time! But another is a super accurate ammonia test too maybe on a smaller scale 0.01 the ammonia was different but the test kits couldnt show that accuracy! Another could also be the temperature! Colder water less active plant growth? What about if you had consitent 12 hours of unchanging light? What about if the ammonia was only at a 0.25 concentration? What about if you did have flow for gas exchange to add some co2 to the water? This is how science work even if you had perfect world changing results there is always more to learn and more to test. 

All in all though you did do a fantastic job and i can see you really tried. I know science is super challenging. Even for my Honours grade (like a published paper here in australia before PhD) i had massive problems with my experiment that i wish i could have fixed! But that is science and the way you explain how it could be better where it went wrong and why you think you results didnt get what you thought is a huge (cannont understate) huge part of science.

Im glad i could have helped where i could and that i was a part of it ive been honoured to help you out

Edited March 6, 2021 by KoolFish97

[CT_]

9 hours ago, Sol said:

yeesh I feel super self conscious about putting this out since I feel like it's kind of bad in the scientific method department but oh well. Y'all seem nice enough not to judge me

You shouldn't be!  That was amazing.  Top tier video.  Well communicated.  Really excellent conclusion.

 

I see lots of undergraduate presentations and that was fantastic.  Also I see nothing scientifically wrong there having a bad result sucks but isn't bad science.  You followed it up with what you would change next time and that is good science.