Conclusion

A) Our terrestrial layer did better than our others. The grass grew taller than most of the other groups columns and are flies not only lived, but mated and grew in population. We cannot say as much for are decomposition pile however. We did have a spider in this column for the first few days, but he escaped on the first day and, fearing for our lives, Krista brutally stomped on him until he was no more and we placed his body back in the chamber. The aquarium was the most unfortunate. Our dear fish lived much longer than we thought he would, however are Nitrate and Ammonia levels were to high/low (2.81 an 1), as well as other factors like to low DO and high turbidity ended up killing are fish.
B) Abiotic factors in our column were:
Aquarium pebbles: they held the bacteria that helped are fish live longer
Soil: it got less moist and developed condensation because it didn’t have acess to water and when the remaining water did began to evaporate it stuck to the plastic wall.
Compost: it began to decompose and lose moisture because bacteria was eating away at it.
Plastic: Nothing changed
Water: Became more and more clouded and raised in bacteria levels. When the fish died and began to decompose, a fowl stench and layer of an unidentified goo formed.
Coffee filter: was almost completely decomposed along with the compost.
C) The water from the terrestrial column seeped into the decomposition column and helped speed up the composting process. The bacteria and elements from the decomposition column seeped into the aquarium and helped pollute are water, killing are beloved fish faster.
D) We are comparing to Jeremys group. There fish died 3 days after transfer because of to high test results. They say there proud of how well there “plant” did. All in, I think are column did better than theirs, mainly because are fish livid at least 9 days after transfer and are test results where more or less normal longer than theirs. The factors that seem most important are making sure to keep the columns far enough apart and that you feed your fish.
E) If we could do it over, we would have kept the fish in the big tank longer so that are aquarium pebbles could have more time to absorb bacteria to clean the tank.
Some of the most important things we learned from this project would be; don’t overfeed your fish, and the earth has a variety of different variables that make life possible and if you take one away or mess one up, byebye life.
F)We did have problems with the data when, one day, the Nitrate level was off the charts and we couldn’t figure out why. Also, some of the testing material was off and we couldn’t get accurate information one day. As for unexpected observations, we didn’t have any except for finding are fish dead. We didn’t make any modifications except for adding a trap door in the aquarium and decomposition columns. This may have affected are experiment because it allowed accesses to more O2 and other elements that it didn’t have access to before.