bottle ecosystems

that was our first biology project. today we did our final observation of the poor thing after like a month. my bottle (along with two other girls) was the control bottle of our two bottle experiement. so we had our lone fish die in the transfer so the teacher kindly replaced it. everything went well from there. our water wasnt neccessary safe to drink straight from the bottle, but it was better than one of my friends. but more on that later. the fish lived through the experiment, but i gladly stuck the poor fish back in the beaker.

but our variable bottle didnt have that much luck. we started out with three fish. one died in transfer, so we didnt bother to replace him. it didnt make that big of a difference to our experiement. if any thing, it proved our hypothesis. but about two weeks into our project, one poor thing passed away. we found him floating around on the bottom of the bottle, slightly starting to decompose... eeww. then last thursday, we found the poor fish floating hopelessly upside down, beyond the help of fresh water. then yesterday while i was walking into the class, i happened to glimse at the bottle. the first dead fish was plastered above the water level and slightly hole-y and very heavily decomposing. it was bad... and very repulsive. but we got the poor fish out of his misery today when we cleared out the bottle.


ok, so more about my friends bottle.
he and his group decided to test if half an apple would help or harm the growth of the aquatic portion and/or the terrestrial portion. his bottle held the half of the apple floating helplessly inside the water. about a week into it, we all noticed a smell emitting from the growth cart. his partner noticed that it was from their bottle. but it gets worse. when we went to check the dissolved nitrate inside his water, the data showed a disgusting thing. (pure water has a 0 dissolved nitrate level. drinkable water ranges from 0-10) his measured a terrible 362. absolutely gross... the smell continued to grow to a repulsive odor. almost as bad as a child's soiled diaper. so today when we were cleaning the bottles out so we could recycle what we could, his bottle smelled soo bad that the people in the back of the Science Lab could smell it and were repulsed. it smelled like a baked bean gas and a child's soiled diaper combined. it was sooo sooo gross.

needless to say, we are all glad that experiement is OVER...