Eggcitement- Once again!

Once again our whole school was filled with excitement on November 3, 2010 waiting for our shipment of trout eggs to arrive. Mr. Hart and I were a little concerned when we opened the container to measure the temperature to find the initial reading at 72 degrees. We assumed that we had not let the thermometer in the container long enough to get an accurate reading so he readjusted the thermometer to find the second reading at 68 degrees. We quickly placed the bag in the tank to acclimate then proceeded to separate live and dead eggs and count.

We had received a total of 390 brook trout eggs; 82 were dead upon arrival. We placed 308 in the tank. We removed 8 that had died on Friday. Over the next three days all the eggs had hatched, but they died almost immediately. We had lost a total of 210 more sac fry or alevin leaving only 90 viable sac fry in the tank.

Mr. Hart and I were greatly concerned because we had never lost so many in such a short time span. I contacted our coordinator who sent us another shipment of sac fry which we received yesterday. We placed an additional 236 sac fry in the tank bring our total to 323. Today the students removed seven sac fry leaving our total count at 316 to date. We tested our water quality and all the numbers were within our normal ranges. We believe the temperature of the container upon arrival may have caused the large number of deaths. We can not be sure, but the second shipment is doing fine so it makes us wonder.

The planning process for our trout release day on May 19, 2010 has already begun. I am thankful for the second shipment of sac fry to help ensure that we have something to release on release day. The students are already looking forward to spending the day at Guss Park in Licking Creek. The new tank crew has begun tending the tank, removing dead fry, checking water quality and temperature. They are excited about the program.

Thoughts from the Tank Tenders:
11-3-10
Leda: The trout are cool! Can't wait to release them.
Nadine: I love trout. They are a neat type of fish species.
Alyssa: This is a really neat thing to me. I have never raised trout at my old school and I never
had fish at my school.
MiKayla: I love the trout and I can't wait until we release them!!!!