Managing the Plant

Over a period of two weeks i have been setting up an experimet to see how the plant reacts to two different environments.

Environment 1: (Place with little to no sunlight)

For a period of one week I left my jar with my plant and fish DJ in an area with little sunlight in the day. But the majority of the time the jar was in complete darkness. I had to make sure the the jar had access to some sunlight so that the plant could photosynthesise and produce oxygen for DJ.

Results:

1.      The plant began to look fragile and brittle

2.      The colour of the plant began to turn an off green to brown colour

3.      The plant began to lose its leaves

As a result of the above, the behaviour of DJ my fish began to change. when the plant is fragile and does not receive enough light, photosynthesis cannot occur. therefore DJ receives less oxygen. When DJ received less oxygen from the plant his behaviour altered slightly. he was not as active as he use to be. In other words he didnt not swim around as often as he normally did and believe it or not, but he also ate less.

As the plant began to lose its leaves it increased the amount of pollutants in the water.

Environment 2: (Place with an abundance of sunlight)

In my second week of this experiment I left the jar with plant and fish in a room than receices both morning sunlight and evening sunlight. I made sure that the jar did not receive direct sunlight as this would increase water temperature so much that the fish and plant could possibly die.

Results:

1.      Plant colour began to turn a rich light green colour

2.      The number of leaves increased from 4 to 7 in just one week (even though the leaves were small)

3.      The width of the stem began to increase

4.      Algea started to grow much more quicker than usual

As a result of the above, the general behaviour of the fish began to change. All of a sudden it was more lively, it swam around more often, it was eating the majority of the food i gave him and he even began making a sort of bubble nest at the surface of the.

Whenever I would fiddle in the water with my fingers, DJ would hide under the large leaves that now grew from the plant, DJ used the plants leaves as protection.

The increase in algae was due to the fact that the jar was exposed to a larger amount of sunlight than usual. Therefore in the second week of my experiment I had to make two water changes instead of one water change per week.

Thanks to my experiment i have concluded that manipulating the amount of sun that the plant gets could have negative and positive impacts on both the fish and the plant. Its just a question of how the individual adapts to the change. Because I prefer to leave the jar in the room that constantly gets light as it increases the growth of the plant which results in more oxygen for the fish. But this would also mean that i would have to make two water changes per week now because an increase in sunlight results in more amounts of algae in the jar.