1997 Volume 37 Issue 1-2 Pages 2-8
C. auratus is a popular fish in Japan. We can verify the respiration rate of the fish by counting the gill-beat cycle, the opening and closing movement of the operculum, and this can be used as a teaching material for elementary school pupils to measure respiration.
The relationships between the frequency of the gill-beat cycle to the water temperature and to the dissolved oxygen concentration in water were determined using 14 fishes ranging from 9 to 13 cm in body length.
It was confirmed that between 10°C and 30°C at a concentration of 7.5 mg O2/l in water, the higher the water temperature was, the higher the gill-beat cycle also was. Significant differences (P < 0.01) in the average gill-beat cycle were found when the water temperature went from l0°C (60.7cycle/min) to 20°C (110.2cycle/min) and again from 20°C to 30°C (148.9cycle/min). There was also a tendency for the average gillbeat cycle to increase as the dissolved oxygen concentration in water decreased at the temperature of 20°C From the above-mentioned experiments, most pupils should be able to understand the effects of temperature on the respiration rate of poikilothermal animals such as fish. The increased rate at which the fish respires in oxygen-deprived water also teaches the necessity of oxygen for living organisms.
