Salmon In The Classroom Blog 1.11.2013

SALMON IN THE CLASSROOM

   At Duck Creek Learning Center, We have started a project called “Salmon in the Classroom”. Salmon in the Classroom is a real life science activity to get students involved in raising, care and maintaining the salmon in the classroom from fall until spring. We start out getting fertilized salmon eggs from the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), where we raise and feed them until they reach fingerling stage.

   Our salmon start out in the EGG stage and will stay in this stage depending on the water temperature; it will take between 6 to 12 weeks to hatch. In this stage you will start to see tiny black spots on the eggs, which are called eyed eggs.

   Next stage is called ALEVIN, which are newly hatched salmon, which have an attached yolk sac that they feed on for nourishment. Nourishment from the yolk sacs lasts up to several weeks. When they start to emerge into the FRY stage, where our salmon are currently at.

   In the FRY stage we start to feed the salmon little by little. The food we feed the salmon look like finely ground coffee, but it’s not. It consists of byproduct of fish, and composite of vitamin.  We will continue to feed the salmon the finely ground food for 2 weeks, until they get longer than 1 inch.

  At the moment we have 190 fry salmon and 10 losses since we've started. The temperature of the fish tank is at a steady 48 degrees, just how it would be in the wild. We have two sets of conjoined twins, where they are conjoined at the still remaining yolk sac. 

WLACE Release 2012

May, 25, 2012

Students from Duck Creek released approximately 45-60 salmon par averaging 3-5 inches in length.  In addition to releasing the fish, students were involved in water quality activities.  The fish were released near Baldwin, MI in the Pere Marquette River.



Salmon fry

Does the water look murky or clear? Well, the water is really clear. The temperature of the tank is about 50 degrees. The ph Level of the water is at 7.6, which is really good. The physical features of the salmon are that they are very big and colorful. The salmon are eating really well;  the majority of the salmon eat from the surface, sub-surface, and the bottom. The average size of the salmon is a about an inch and a half. There are about 85 to 90 salmon left in the tank. The special features I have seen are the Siamese twins, they are still alive which is great and really surprising. 

Written By: Ben Greene

2/10/2012

MY Opinion on the Salmon Fry in the Classroom 

My opinion on the Salmon Fry, well I love learning new things and so I took this class and it is fun and I have learned a lot about the salmon. When I started this class I thought it was going to be boring, but I got into it and now I love it and I don’t want to stop learning about salmon. This class is such an adventure so much to explore and learn. Well, we have had the fish for about five months now and we had them since they were eggs and now they are fish, which is sweet watching them get bigger.  Feeding them is the best because they are so jumpy and happy for the food. We started off with about 300 fish and now we have about 100 fish and they are doing well. We have the first Siamese fish that have survived after being hatched. The temperature of the fish tank is always at 49 or 50 degrees because the salmon are fresh water fish and they are cold blooded.  We clean the fish tank about once or twice a week. The tank has to be clean or the fish will die off. We do PH levels, which are the measurements of the acidic level or basic quality of water. PH scales ranges from a value of 0 (very acidic) to 14 (very basic), with 7 being neutral. Our tank is at a PH level of 7.4 which is really good.

Witten by: Ben Greene

Update: 2/7/2012

Salmon Fry Week #4

The water is slightly murky. The temperature of the water is 49 degrees and the pH level is 7.3, which is getting closer to a normal range. Most of the salmon are that light algae green color with light gray stripes, but there are still a few with the dark forest green color with black stripes. They are eating off the surface of the tank. We have changed the size of the fish food; it is about the size of pellets now. There are about 140 salmon in the tank; we lost a few when we changed the water last week. Most of the fish are swimming normal, but there are still a few swimming sideways. The Siamese twins are still living, but we have not been able to find them.  So we think they are hiding on the bottom of the tank.

Megan Anderson & Caitlin Kohler

Update: 2/2/2012

Salmon Fry in the Classroom

The quality of the water is slightly murky. The temperature of the water is 49 degrees and the PH level is 7.6, which is great on the PH scale. The physical features of the salmon; they are still a dark forest green color on the top, and a bright silver color on the bottom with black stripes. All of the salmon are eating off the surface which is great because that means they are learning that they can’t just wait for the food to fall to the bottom of the tank. The current size of the food is a little bigger than coffee grains. There are about 125 salmon fish left in the tank. The salmon are swimming fast and normal and the twin salmon are still alive.

By: Ben Greene& Caitlynn Kohler

Top view from tank

Update: 1/30/2012

Salmon Fry week #3

The quality of the water is clear today, we changed out some of the water today. The temperature of the water is 50 degrees and the pH level of the water is 7.3, which it means that it’s getting to a more normal range on the pH scale. My teacher Eric and I noticed that some of the salmon are a light algae green color with light gray stripes and some of the other salmon are still that dark forest green color with dark black stripes. We deiced that the light algae green color salmon are developing more than the dark forest green color salmon. The light algae color fish are a lot fatter than the dark forest color fish, the dark forest ones are a lot thinner too. They are still eating off the surface of the tank. The current size of the fish food is the size of pop-rocks. Some of the salmon started to swim sideways or upside down again. The Siamese twins are still living, but they swim on the bottom of the tank most of the time. There are still about 150 salmon living in the tank.

Written by: Megan Anderson.

Lighter algae green vs. darker forest green! 

Notice the difference in colors of the Fry