Goldfish Respiratory Lab Write Up

Does the temperature of the water affect the fishs respiratory rate? The fishs respiratory rate will change due to the levels of oxygen in the different water temperatures. To find out if the fish breathed more in warmer or colder water, we put the fish in a beaker filled with 300ml of room temperature water. We counted the breaths the fish took for 30 seconds and then multiplied our results by two because we wanted to see how many breaths they took in a minute. After we took the room temperature we got a larger beaker and filled it with water and added ice. We then took the respiratory rate of the fish in the colder water to see how the temperature change affected their respiratory rate. My hypothesis was that the fish would breathe more in the colder water because the water has less oxygen, therefore the fish would have to breath more to get the oxygen he needs. The fish would then breathe less in warm water because he wouldnt need as many breaths to get the proper oxygen into his system. When we replaced the ice water in the larger beaker with hot water, we waited for the temperature to rise and then repeated the procedure that we used with the cold water. Fish breathe through their gills. Gills are the two organs on each side of the fish that extract oxygen from the water. The gills are made up of about 70% capillaries that are carrying blood back to the heart and lungs. When the water comes through the fishs mouth and into its gills, the oxygen filters through the gills and into the capillaries where the oxygen is transferred to the lungs enabling the fish to breathe. When the oxygen levels are low, like in cold water, the fish breathe

less. But when the oxygen levels are higher, like in warm water, the fish will breathe more because there is more dissolved oxygen in the water. Dissolved oxygen, or oxygen saturation, is the measure of the amount of oxygen that is carried in a given medium. The water molecules carry oxygen in them, and when the molecules are more spread out, there is more room for the oxygen to go through. In colder water, the molecules are more closely packed together, making it harder for oxygen to escape into the water for the fish to breathe. My hypothesis was that the fish would breathe more in the colder climate due to the lack of oxygen that would make it have to breathe more to get the proper amount of oxygen into their lungs. The fish would then breathe less because the warmer temperature water would have more oxygen so the fish would have to breathe less to get the proper amount. Our data concluded that the fish breathed less in the cold water and more in the warm water. When the water was room temperature my teams fish breathed 146 times in a minute. In 10 degrees Celsius water our fish breathed 60 times in a minute, and in the 29 degree water our fish breathed 180 times in a minute. The average for the room temperature water was 146 times per minute, which are exactly the same results that our team found. The average for the 10-degree water was 51 breaths a minute and the average for the 29-degree climate was 160 breaths per minute. Our teams result varied from exactly the average to 20 breathes off the average. The climate that the fish were put in plays a role in the respiratory rate. The temperature changed from room temperature to 10 degrees Celsius in 15 minutes, and then from 10 degrees to 29 degrees in 20 minutes. The rapid change of their

climate temperature caused the fish to be put under a lot of stress which had an effect on their breathing rate. Also many of the fish had been subjects in the previous lab where we studied their tails under a microscope to see the blood circulation. That was a very stressful experience for them and they must have been very worn out from that which may have also affected their respiratory rate. When we were counting the fishs breaths, the fish would swim around the beaker and his mouth and gills werent visible at some points during the lab, so we had to guess how many times the fish breathed during those points in the lab. All of the members of our team would come up with a different amount of breaths, so when that happened we pick the median of all of the numbers we got and that was the data we wrote down. Many of the fish were under a lot of stress because of the enclosed environment. There were about 5 pairs of big eyes staring at the fish at one time and that probably scared the fish making it breath faster or slower. Also when we pulled the thermometer out of the beaker, it hit the fish sometimes, which would scare it, and affect its breathing. The environment the fish was in or the mistake that our team made while counting affected our data. When a fish is in colder water it breathes more slowly due to the lack of oxygen and when it is in warmer water it will breathe more because there is more oxygen in the water. The environment the fish was in and the reliability of our data had an effect on the data we recorded. I think the next lab we do should be on how the oxygen gets to the gills and then to the lungs. I think this because oxygen levels in the water had a lot to do with this lab and I think that it will deepen our understanding of how the temperature of the fishs environment can have an effect

on their respiratory rate. I think another follow up lab should be how the water temperature effects the blood flow in the fish and finding out how the oxygen levels in the bloodstream effect the heart beat and how the respiratory rate connects with the fishs blood circulation.