The Experiment Proceedure

• I will attempt to replicate the filtering process using an aquarium.

• A two gallon aquarium will be filled with water collected from the Chesapeake Bay.

• An initial baseline water test will then be conducted using testing strips.  The strips will test for Nitrate, Chlorine, Hardness, pH, Nitrite, and Alkalinity.

• The baseline test will then be compared to a followup water test after the completion of the experiment in order to determine if the oysters had any impact on the water quality. 

• Five oysters will be placed in the tank and then algae will be added to the tank.  The oysters will be monitored to see how effective they are in filtering the added algae.  

• A timer will be set up and and the entire experiment will be captured by time lapse photography.  

• For the time lapse, we will incorporate a DSLR camera attached to an intervalometer.  The intervalometer can be set to automatically trigger the shutter on the camera.   We will set the camera to take 1 picture every 30 seconds until the completion of the test.

• If one oyster can filter 50 gallons in 1 day, we would expect that they each filter 2.083 gallons per hour.  We used 5 oysters so we would expect that they together could filter 2 gallons in 12 minutes.