School Science Investigation Idea

[axolotl-danio]

I was not sure what section to post this in so feel free to move it if you feel it would be appropriate somewhere else on the forum.

For 1A science we have to do some sort of scientific investigation of our own choice. Kind of like science fair but without the board. My Idea is to test whether or not stress zyme works and if so how long it takes to work to bring down ammonia levels. If you don't know stress zyme is a liquid that supposedly contains over 100 million good bacteria that break down ammonia per tsp. I was going to set up 20 ice cream containers, 5 with plain water as a control, 5 with 1ppm ammonia, 5 with 3ppm ammonia and 5 with 5ppm ammonia. Each ice cream container would have an airstone and an equal amount of bioballs/ceramic tubes in it as it would be too expensive to filter them all. The recommended amount of stress zyme would be added and then ammonia readings would be taken each day to see if they are dropping and at what rate.

My questions are:

Do you think it is a good idea?

Do you think it will work?

How can I improve my experiment?

and any other helpful information would be greatly appreciated.

[Caryl]

Containers of just tap water should not have ammonia in them. You need fish, snails or something to produce the ammonia first and the same number in each container.

[ryanjury]

I would get the pure ammonia that people use for fishless cycles and use that.. Then you could make up exact ammonia levels to make an accuarte test.

Another one I think would be good to do would be to load up a tank with ammonia and compare how fast different medias lower the ammonia levels. Ie x buckets x identical filters (plus a control) one filter filled with filter wool alone, another with pumice, another with ceramic rings another with those plastic bio ball things measure the ammonia daily and see what one works better I think it would be interesting to see what happens. Only difficult things would be finding identical filters (I guess you could even make these pretty easily) and getting the same airflow through each one..

[Caryl]

Never thought of buying pure ammonia :oops:

[Jennifer]

I was going to set up 20 ice cream containers, 5 with plain water as a control, 5 with 1ppm ammonia, 5 with 3ppm ammonia and 5 with 5ppm ammonia.

You have chosen a good number of samples and that will help to create a good set of data for your results and help to minimise experimental error. However, you need to decide what you are testing. It sounds like you are trying to see how well StressZyme works to eliminates ammonia. To do that, you would need to compare it to a negative control and ideally also a positive control. For example, you could have one sample set with plain water (your positive control, it should always show the presence of ammonia since there are no denitrifying bacteria in the sample), one set with StressZyme added (your test sample) and one set with used tank water vaccumed from a cycled tank (your negative control, it should always show deceased ammonia levels since there are definately denitrifying bacteria in the sample). Then you would then add the same amount of pure ammonia to each sample and see how much ammonia is left after 5 days, 10 days, 15 days (or something like that).

Each ice cream container would have an airstone and an equal amount of bioballs/ceramic tubes in it as it would be too expensive to filter them all.

That sounds like a good idea, although it would be better to have good oxygen flow right around the media where the bacteria will grow. If you can't afford a small sponge filter for each sample, how about adding a chunk of sponge to the end if the airline so that air is flowing through the media - you can get ordinary sponge pretty cheaply. Then you wouldn't need to use any other media.

The recommended amount of stress zyme would be added and then ammonia readings would be taken each day to see if they are dropping and at what rate.

This is a good idea although there are a couple of things to consider:

1. Test sensitivity - The amount of ammonia you add should be low enough that you don't kill the bacteria outright, but high enough to be detectable on your test kit. Better do a preliminary study with various ppm of ammonia to determine how sensitive your test kit is.

2. Temperature - The test sample at about 30 degrees C should do an ammonia cycle in 3 to 5 days. At cooler temperatures, this will take a lot longer so if you can't keep them warm, you might need to keep sampling for up to three weeks or so.

If you had more sample pottles it would be very interesting to also use a couple of other products as samples too, such as Cycle and TLC Smart Start.

Let us know how it turns out.

[phoenix44]

Also use deionised water, and not just normal water.

[axolotl-danio]

Wow thanks everyone for the really good ideas. Sorry Caryl I forgot to mention I was planning on using pure ammonia. I will probably use the sponge on the tubing idea to keep the costs down and read up on the levels of ammonia the bacteria can handle.

[Moya]

I really like your idea! But instead of taking the 'does stresszyme work' tack, I reckon if you took Jennifers mention on ammonia toxicity to bacteria, and conducted an experiment on how their effectiveness dropped at increasing toxicities, this would be really interesting. I know that if the ammonia is too high, that the environment becomes too toxic for the bacteria and they start to die off. You could do the same thing as planned, with varying parts per million of ammonia per container, going all the way up to very very toxic, and then be able to produce some interesting graphs of what sort of toxicity bacteria can stand. While this information is probably readily available, what your teachers will mainly be looking at is your scientific method, and the conclusions you draw from the data you compile.

Or on another idea, you could have several water containers all with varying pH. Would have the same type of media, amount of media, ammonia concentration and stresszyme added, and you could look at the optimal pH for nitrobacter and nitrosomonas. If you can try to have several of each independent variable (the variable that we are changing, ie the pH) then this will make your results much more trustworthy. Only difficulty may be in making sure the pH stayed stable.

Remember: A big part of experimenting, is sitting down at the end of it all and talking about what could have been done better/differently. So if the idea you go for has a couple of 'holes' in it, try to rectify them as much as you can, and then have a good talk about it at the end!

[sunrise001]

hey i found sum1 else whos still at school as well its good to no im not the only young person who addicted to fish

:bounce:

[SamH]

hey i found sum1 else whos still at school as well its good to no im not the only young person who addicted to fish

:bounce:

Erm... There's a few of us, I can think of at least 6 active users here under the age of 18 just off the top of my head.

[sunrise001]

i geuss i dont no many lol

[SamH]

Well then get to know us

[sunrise001]

us?

[phoenix44]

LOL

hahahahhahahahha

[SamH]

I am more than one person I mean us as people? IDK, this is going to get split soon.

[axolotl-danio]

Anyway staying on topic...

[Ice222]

Although I've tried stress zyme, I have no idea how well it works since I only used it at the start of my tank cycling but gave up on using it before any changes in my readings occurred. I can say that a similar product, seachem's stability is quite powerful and fast working though, so if you're looking for something with a clear effect that's fast acting, maybe stability would work better for your experiment. I was going to cycle a tank with pure ammonia, and had the tank at 4ppm ammonia, but decided to try using stability on it instead, it went down to 0.25ppm when I checked it 4hours later. Although I think it would be neat to see if your results would show if stress zyme is effective or not, just though I'd put the option out there in case if stress zyme doesn't work out for your experiment.

[alanmin4304]

When adding ammonia, how do you know how much evapourates?

[kiwiplymouth]

From engeneringtoolbox.com

* Ammonia Molecular weight : 17.03 g/mol

* Ammonia Melting point : -78oC

* Ammonia Latent heat of fusion (1,013 bar, at triple point) : 331.37 kJ/kg

* Ammonia Liquid Density (1.013 bar at boiling point) : 682 kg/m3 (250 K : 669 kg/m3) (300 K : 600 kg/m3) (400 K : 346 kg/m3)

* Ammonia Liquid Specific Heat Capacity (cp) (250 K : 4.52 kJ/kg.K) (300 K : 4.75 kJ/kg.K) (400 K : 6.91 kJ/kg.K)

* Ammonia Liquid/gas equivalent (1.013 bar and 15oC (59oF)) : 947 vol/vol

* Ammonia Liquid Dynamic Viscosity (250K : 245 106 Ns/m2) (300K : 141 106 Ns/m2) (400K : 38 106 Ns/m2)

* Ammonia Liquid Thermal Conductivity (250 K : 592 106 kW/m.K) (300 K : 477 106 kW/m.K) (400 K : 207 106 kW/m.K)

* Ammonia Boiling point (1.013 bar) : -33.5oC

* Ammonia Latent heat of vaporization (1.013 bar at boiling point) : 1371.2 kJ/kg

* Ammonia Vapor pressure (at 21oC or 70oF) : 8.88 bar

* Ammonia Critical point - Critical temperature : 132.4oC - Critical pressure : 112.8 bar

* Ammonia Gas Density (1.013 bar at boiling point) : 0.86 kg/m3

* Ammonia Gas Density (1.013 bar and 15oC (59oF)) : 0.73 kg/m3

* Ammonia Gas Compressibility Factor (Z) (the ratio of the actual volume of the gas to the volume determined according to the perfect gas law) (1.013 bar and 15oC (59oF)) : 0.9929

* Ammonia Gas Specific Gravity (air = 1) (1.013 bar and 21oC (70oF)) : 0.597

* Ammonia Gas Specific volume (1.013 bar and 21oC (70oF)) : 1.411 m3/kg

* Ammonia Gas Specific Heat Capacity at constant pressure (cp) (1.013 bar and 15oC (59oF)) : 0.037 kJ/(mol.K)

* Ammonia Gas Specific Heat Capacity at constant volume (cv) (1.013 bar and 15oC (59oF)) : 0.028 kJ/(mol.K)

* Ammonia Gas Ratio of Specific Heats (Gamma: cp/cv) (1.013 bar and 15oC (59oF)) : 1.309623

* Ammonia Gas Dynamic Viscosity (1.013 bar and 0oC (32oF)) : 0.000098 Poise

* Ammonia Gas Thermal conductivity (1.013 bar and 0oC (32oF)) : 22.19 mW/(m.K)

* Ammonia Gas Solubility in water (1.013 bar and 0oC (32oF)) : 862 vol/vol

* Ammonia Gas Autoignition temperature : 630oC

[alanmin4304]

Your point being?

[phoenix44]

Just some facts about ammonia :lol:

[kiwiplymouth]

Your point being?

I just thought that axolotl-danio may be interested in some of the properties of the chemical that he is experimenting with.