4^th Grade Projects

In November, we begin setting up our aquarium to house our salmon eggs which will arrive around the first of the year. Our salmon are Chinook.  The water in the tank needs to be kept at about 52 degrees and have the right bacteria to house the salmon eggs.  We get the salmon eggs when they have developed to the eye stage.  The eyes can be seen in the egg.  If you hold them in your hand, the little fish will move and you can see it, because the eyes will move inside the egg.  When the salmon have lost their egg sacks, we begin to feed them every hour!  We weigh the food based on their size and the number of fish in the tank.  They eat a mixture of ground up fish, which has to be refrigerated.  Once we start feeding them, it is important to test the water quality, so we do that each day.  If the nitrates get too high, or the PH is not correct, we have to drain about a third of the water and replace it with treated water in which the chlorine been removed.  Along with replacing the water we vacuum the bottom of the tank to get rid of any uneaten food.  The salmon will only eat food that is floating.  If it is sitting on the bottom it ruins the water quality.  In the spring we take a field trip out to Horn Rapids Park in north Richland.  There we release our "babies" into the Yakima River.   Benton Conservation, who supplies the egg, tanks, and water quality kits, has many learning stations for the schools to rotate through.   Each one has information about salmon such as migration, pollution, getting around the dams, etc.