Eggs Arriving This Week!

In preparation for the egg arrival, we turned on the chiller and set the temperature to 51 degrees F. We checked the ph to find it running 7.8 so we vacuum-siphoned 16 gallons of water from the tank. Then bought 6 gallons of spring water and mixed acid buffer solution to lower the ph for 10 gallons of water from the tap. We added the spring water and the water with the acid buffer solution to the tank and retested to find the ph lowered to 7.0 . Yeah! It is important to start out with water in the tank that is as close to 7.0 as possible because once the fish hatch and begin to put waste and debris in the tank the ph will naturally rise. We found out last year that a daily fresh water change while siphon-vacuuming the tank was the best way to keep the ph constant along with reducing the ph of the water before adding it to the tank. We are looking forward to another successful year. The students are eager and ready to care for our eggs. Stay tuned to find out the statistics of our egg arrival which we expect to be sometime during the day on November 4, 2009.