INTRODUCTION Goldfish (Carassius auratus) are ectothermic (cold-blooded) animals. This means that their body temperature changes with the change in the environmental temperature. When there is a low water temperature a fish slows down and so do its metabolic activities and when water temperatures are high, fish speed up and their metabolic processes increase as well. Proteins and enzymes are also affected by temperature changes. Oxygen is essential for the production of ATP from nutrients in cells; consequently oxygen must be delivered to a cell in sufficient amounts. Within fish, the counter-current exchange system allows for the efficient extraction of oxygen from the water by the gills. Basically when a fish takes in water, …show more content…

In both interpretation of the data, oxygen consumption increased and decreased repeatedly. Meaning oxygen was somehow added to the beaker containing the fish. This error may have happened through individual groups not properly securing that their sponge had no air bubbles within it, before replacing it back into the beaker with the water. This may have possibly been responsible for the higher concentration of oxygen therefore interfering with our results. Also for every group their opposing fish in similar weight, were not identically the same size, each fish was a mere estimate one another. This may have tempered results as fish that are generally larger in size consume more oxygen.

As a fish ventilates, it absorbs oxygen and within a closed chamber (as conducted by this experiment) the amount of oxygen present decreases. Metabolic rates depend on temperature. As temperature increases the rate of oxygen consumption increases too, although an increase in temperature demands sufficient amount of oxygen.
ABSTRACT
Oxygen is just as fundamentally vital for fishes as it is for the well-being of Humans. In this Lab we examined if varying the temperature of the water had caused a change in the ventilation rate and oxygen consumption of Goldfish. In this experiment we hoped to demonstrate the effect of temperature variance on the ventilation rates of Goldfish. This was done by having