Question

A friend of yours is fascinated by marine snails and keeps them as pets. He has two pet snail-like shelled organisms that he keeps in separate water filled tanks. Both of theseorganisms are of the same species, so the only difference between them is the tanks they are in. Let's label the tanks as Tank A and Tank B. Your friend is lazy and only checks the water conditions and pH levels of Tank A. Your friend assumes if Tank A is fine, Tank B should be fine as well. After a couple of months, your friend notices that the shell of of the snail in Tank B has begun to chip off and deteriorate. The snail and the shell of the snail in Tank A look normal and healthy.

Please answer the following questions based on the above information. Each part is worth 2 points:

1. What is one question that you have about what could be happening to the snail in Tank B after observing this?

2. Form a hypothesis based on that question. What is that hypothesis?

3. Describe an experiment you would conduct to test your hypothesis.

4. What results would you expect from your experiment?

5. What conclusion would you make based on the results from your experiment?

Answer 1

1. What is one question that you have about what could be happening to the snail in Tank B after observing this?

Are the pH of both tanks the same?

2. Form a hypothesis based on that question. What is that hypothesis?

Since the pH is highly important to preserve a determined marine specie, it is important to manage the conditions of each tank. Our hypothesis would be “If the the shell of the snail in tank B starts to chip off, the pH on the tank is not appropriate”
3. Describe an experiment you would conduct to test your hypothesis.

We will measure the pH of both tanks and we will use the pH of the Tank A as positive control were the snail will grow properly. We will use the pH of tank B as experimental. After that, we need to make three replicates of the experiment.

We will put one snail under the pH of the previous Tank A and other snail under the pH of the previous tank B. We wont change any other variable and we will wait a month. After that, we need to check both tanks. We will repeat this experiment three times.
4. What results would you expect from your experiment?

We expect that tank A looks normal and the snail healthy while tank B should be deteriorated and the shell of the snail affected.

5. What conclusion would you make based on the results from your experiment?

We can conclude that the pH of the environment of a determined specie is essential for its survival.