Particulate organic carbon (POC) content in the FIIN-2 increased with increasing aggregate size in both treatments (data not shown). We did not observe any differences in POC:PON ratios between the different sampling days in either of the treatments (One-Way Anova; p > 0.05) or between the two treatments on any of the sampling days (Student\'s t-test; p > 0.05) (data not shown). Therefore, the average POC:PON ratios for the entire experiment did not show any differences between the two treatments (Student\'s t-test; p = 0.22): the average POC:PON ratios were 9.5 ± 1.6 and 10.1 ± 0.7 for the non-ballasted and ballasted treatments, respectively. The average POC:DW ratios decreased in both treatments over the entire incubation time and decreased from 8 weight percent POC to 4 wt.% POC in the ballasted treatment, and from 31 wt.% POC to 8–9 wt.% POC in the non-ballasted treatment (Table 2). We observed significant differences between the POC:DW ratios between the ballasted and non-ballasted aggregates on all sampling days (Student\'s t-test; p < 0.05).
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