How does temperature affect the respiration rate in goldfish?
In this lab, we changed the water temperature of a fish and determined if changing the temperature affects the fish's circulation/respiration rate.
Hypothesis
I believe that when the temperature of the water rises, the goldfish will breath faster and faster. And when the water cools down, I think that the fish will breath slower.
Materials
- One Goldfish
- Ice Cubes or Ice Bath
- Room Temperature Water
- Warm Water
- Thermometer
- Timer
- Empty Bowl
Procedures
We first started by gathering our materials. Then we put the goldfish in room temperature water(15-20 Celsius). We counted how many breaths the fish took in 5 minutes at room temperature. To count the breathes, we observed the opening and closing of the gill cover. Then we made the temperature of the water between (10-14 Celsius) and counted the respiration rate again for the goldfish. Again we recorded the respiration rate when the water got to (5-9 Celsius). We changed the ice bath to a warm water bath next. We measured the temperature at (26-30 Celsius) and measured the respiration rate once again. Last, we dropped the temperature again to (21-25 Celsius) and recorded the fish's breathing.
Results
Results
Our results proved our hypothesis correct. As the temperature dropped, the goldfish started breathing a lot less. And as the temperature rose, the fish's breathing rapidly increased.
Conclusion
The fish started breathing dramatically more and less depending on the temperature of the water. Room temperature acts like our control temperature. The breathing of the fish dropped 100 breaths when we lowered the temperature by 10 degrees Celsius. And the breathing rose 100 breaths in a minute when we rose the temperature 10 degrees Celsius.
The reason for the fish to breath slower when the water got colder was that Fish are cold-blooded, which means they take on the temperature of their surroundings. Fish use less energy than warm-blooded creatures. When the water is too cold their metabolism becomes sluggish and they slow down. When the water warms up, their metabolism speeds up and they eat and digest food faster and grow faster.
We had many flaws in this experiment. First, we had to count the breathes of the goldfish by sight. We didn't have any sensors. We could have missed many breathes because we had to recount several times. The fish would move so we could not see its gill cover move, hide the gill cover from us, or the fish would breath to fast. This could have messed some of our data up. The second flaw we had was the water temperature. Because the water temperatures in the table are in sections of temperatures, we had to choose a temperature in each section. We didn't choose temperatures that were the same distance from each other, so some temperatures were close to each other, rather than being spread out evenly to get more accurate data.
