The Coral Reef Project At Stratton Elementary School

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Brandon Rutherford

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Two of my new students Alice and Evani came into school on their day off to learn how to culture Rotifers. They'll be participating in our efforts to have students breed clownfish.

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Brandon Rutherford

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My local news channel WCIA did a video short on my project for the nightly news.

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My kids were super excited and I couldn't ask for a better spokesperson in Nipun. The interview was supposed to take 20 minutes but the anchor and photographer stayed for almost 2 hours, getting an in-depth tour from the students.

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Sam, one of my newest student leaders also gave a great interview with almost no prep. She's been working hard most days after school to learn reef keeping.

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The kids in Mrs. Wilson's class must be overfeeding their tank because the Halimeda is getting out of control. I should remember to have someone check the calcium levels in that tank, it's not getting supplemented and I learned the hard way how much Ca+ that plant can pull out of the water.

Here's the link to the news story

http://www.illinoishomepage.net/new...t-gives-students-hands-on-learning-experience
 
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revhtree

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Love this and great to see new students and updates!
 
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I've been working with my new student leaders after school all week and today we had a veteran reef keeper help. Nipun taught Alice how to do the basic water chemistry tests, a job she'll start taking over soon.

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Meanwhile Aislin and Sam are making paintings for our sponsors.

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A new batch of clownfish eggs are ready to be pulled. This time we pulled them 7 days from first spawning.

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We've been giving them a soak in methylene blue for 5 minutes and then transferring them to a tank with 1.018 specific gravity with no acclimation.

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We add a bunch of Rotifers and green water immediately.

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Then we secure them at an angle with moderate airflow and wait.

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Here's the initial breeding setup. I'm trying to scrap together more money and space to expand.
 
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Brandon Rutherford

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Another hatch

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Water is very dense with Rotifers and some rouge adult brine shrimp that contaminated our rotifer culture. Ammonia is already at 2-3 ppm but from past hatches it seems like food availability is more important than water quality. I'm going to start doing drip water changes.
 

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I guarantee that these kids know more than the average hobbyist! LOL!
 

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The bristle worms in my tank have multiplied and grown fatter. They have been around the firefish and forced it to hide in the live rock. Even though I took out some of them but they still keep coming around the firefish. Can they sting the firefish or the other fish?
 
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The bristle worms in my tank have multiplied and grown fatter. They have been around the firefish and forced it to hide in the live rock. Even though I took out some of them but they still keep coming around the firefish. Can they sting the firefish or the other fish?

I think that the worms could influencing where your goby likes to hide. The bristles are defensive and the worms aren't too bright, but they can move around aggressively and small fish could be wary of them. Have you thought about putting in a coral banded shrimp?
 
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My projected created an informational marine biology and art exhibit at my local fish store. We also shared this work at the marine breeders initiative conference earlier this summer.

I hope to create a new, bigger exhibit for the aquatic experience expo in Chicago. I'm taking another bus if kids up there if we can scape the funds together.

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The clownfish fry are going through metamorphosis and are getting coloration. I stopped feeding rotifers and am switching to artemia nauplii and APBreed TDO size A food. I'm continuing to hear mixed things about feeding artemia but since my students and I aren't always around the fish, the living, suspended food source seems necessary. I'm still doing 20-40% water changes and will put in a sponge filter this weekend.

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Today my class skyped again with Lan the owner of Algaebarn.com. Lan is teaching ongoing lessons about culturing plankton and will soon send each kid some Tig Pods to take care of at home. My students think he's a rock star.

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Not really reef related, but my school project just expanded into keeping rats. I have a ball python and a rainbow boa in my classroom and feed freshly killed rats weekly. I let some students play around with a few feeder rats and student interest exploded. Kids that had only moderate interest in the aquariums are obsessed with rat care. We now have 4 rats that are so beloved by throngs of kids that they have to be kept as pets. They get passed around at recess each day and I'm starting a program where kids can check them out and take them home for a night. The waiting list to do this is already several weeks long. Staff members at my school that were already annoyed with me are furious that I brought in vermin that they're kids are begging to play with. I never knew there was so much stigma associated with rats. What have I got myself into...
 
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The clownfish fry are going through metamorphosis and are getting coloration. I stopped feeding rotifers and am switching to artemia nauplii and APBreed TDO size A food. I'm continuing to hear mixed things about feeding artemia but since my students and I aren't always around the fish, the living, suspended food source seems necessary. I'm still doing 20-40% water changes and will put in a sponge filter this weekend.

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Today my class skyped again with Lan the owner of Algaebarn.com. Lan is teaching ongoing lessons about culturing plankton and will soon send each kid some Tig Pods to take care of at home. My students think he's a rock star.

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Not really reef related, but my school project just expanded into keeping rats. I have a ball python and a rainbow boa in my classroom and feed freshly killed rats weekly. I let some students play around with a few feeder rats and student interest exploded. Kids that had only moderate interest in the aquariums are obsessed with rat care. We now have 4 rats that are so beloved by throngs of kids that they have to be kept as pets. They get passed around at recess each day and I'm starting a program where kids can check them out and take them home for a night. The waiting list to do this is already several weeks long. Staff members at my school that were already annoyed with me are furious that I brought in vermin that they're kids are begging to play with. I never knew there was so much stigma associated with rats. What have I got myself into...
Love the rats!!! I also have a ball python and ended up with a pet rat when the she decided she wasn't going to eat it, so when morning came around I had to give the little guy a pardon! They make wonderful pets ... I have litter trained mine and even walks outside on a leash!!!
 

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What can we do to get a R2R logo up there supporting the kiddos? :)
 
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Not sure if I announced it to R2R but I have a 7 week old son Will who is taking up a lot of my time. I promised my wife I'd only stay 3 hours after school, which means I often bring my son Will to my classroom late at night to catch up on things. At 1am Friday morning I turned on the lights to find this huge bristle? worm eating a snail. It seems like several snails have died under mysterious circumstances and I wonder if this critter is responsible. Pictures don't really show scale but it has to be at least 10+ inches long. I was so scared of dropping it, I couldn't get a good photo. I put in one of our QT tanks to see if we can grow it out.


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All of our rotifer cultures have been contaminated with artemia. We only have one screen to strain our nauplii and rotifers and I'm guessing that a student didn't wash it out between the two cultures. The brine shrimp don't seem to negatively affect the rotifer population and once in a while we strain them out to give our fish a tasty treat.


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Our two pet rats are taking my school by storm. I'm actually a little jealous that they are taking attention away from our reef tanks and new baby clownfish which are arguably just as cute (to me at least). Recently several students from other classes who've been extremely upset have been sent to my room for some 'rat time' to calm down. They make surprising good therapy animals and will fall asleep in your hand or sit for hours on your shoulders if you let them (though they can and will poop on you).

The schedule to take them home is getting increasing complex and I don't know how I'm going to manage it. Plus the response from some of the teachers in my building is becoming increasing divisive with multiple areas declared 'rat free zones'. Luckily my boss, Stephanie Eckels, who is amazing and the reason why I work at Stratton, has my back.

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Last spring I blew off several people from R2R who wanted pictures. A lot of pictures were damaged by a water spill and during the end of the year craziness, shipping the rest out slipped my mind. We're still painting after school almost every day now and I hope to keep good on my offer of free pictures to those who want them. Aislin painted this one with a rat on her head almost the entire time.
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