Our data seemed to be generally consistent; however, there are certain errors that we made during the testing that altered our data values. In the first week of the eco-column testing, we were not used to the ammonia testing tools. Therefore, we could not complete the testing. Some other errors that are in our testing occurred at the beginning of the lab when we were moving the fish. When we were moving the fish, we were careless and used chopsticks to pick up the fish, which caused the fish to die over night. Through this we had to burry the fish in the decomposition and this might have changed the values slightly in areas of nitrate. The change in nitrate level difference after the death of the fish is displayed by the drastic increase in the nitrate level for two weeks. Another source of error can be the second death of the fish. We should have made sure that the temperature of the eco-column was consistent even throughout the night time. This drastic drop in the temperature of the column cause our second fish to die and the plant growth to hinder in the week 11/19. An mistake(?) or an interesting aspect that we didn’t expect is the growth of the fungi in the terrestrial chamber. Because of the humid nature of the terrestrial chamber, fungi started to grow on the ground and on the leaves of the plant. This might have thrown off the data for average plant growth. This could be prevented by poking holes into the terrestrial chamber. These are some of the possibilities that might have caused a small percent of error.it.
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