Day Nineteen: First Taste of Freedom

Monday morning and we had been away from the fish over the weekend. When we checked this morning we saw the trout have had a big growth spurt. they are changing so much each day! We estimate they have approximately doubled in size since they first hatched from their eggs. Robert stopped by today and suggested we release them from the hatching basket into the general space of the aquarium. I carefully picked up the basket from its location, hanging on the side of the aquarium, and keeping it in the water, turned it sideways to allow the alevin to swim out. Most of them swam out right away. I had to dip and rinse the basket a few times to make sure there were none left in the basket. The students and I had a collective gasp when most of the trout sunk straight to the bottom, but Robert assured us that this was perfectly normal and reminded us that this was where they would be in their natural habitat also until they were developed enough to swim more freely around the tank. Robert also brought us a gallon size zip-lock bag of fish food. It has a very fine texture, almost like dark brown powder. As the fish get bigger their food size will change, but for now...specks for the specks. Jaime G. and Shirley P. were the first to feed the fish today. Starting tomorrow we will have a weekly team of students that feeds and records other information about the trout. Everyone in the class will get to do this job before we release the trout in May. It is amazing how quickly they are growing! If you look carefully at some of the alevin in the video, you can still see the orange on their belly. that is the remaining egg yolk they are still consuming as they grow.

Day Fourteen: Growing!

The Bad News: We had to remove 16 dead eggs/fish/alevin between Feb 21 and today. This is the largest amount of dead we have had so far. We hope this does not mean there is a problem. Robert and Ameka told us that we shouldn't loose more than 20% of our population during the course of the project, so since we have between 500 and 600 eggs to start with, we know we are still doing really well.

The Good News:The rest of the fish look very healthy. They are swimming a lot more and are turning from mostly orange to dark brown. They are also getting larger. The temperature is maintaining well at an average of 55.6 degrees Fahrenheit. All the foam has cleared up and the aquarium looks very clean.

Day Twelve: Quotable Quotes

During writing today we had a journal entry about our Trout in the Classroom project. These were some of the best quotes from the students' journals. (Photo by Dani Swayney)

"What I like about the trout is that when we got them Robert said that they will be hatched in 2 to 3 weeks and they got hatched in one week! That is so cool!"---Tori T.

"The thing I like about about them is they swim around funny and the best part is they're all girls!"---Shirley P.

"I like that we are the only class in all the classes and out of all the schools around. I love to watch the fish grow. It is fun. I love to do math so I can keep track of the fish that are dead and alive."---Amaris W.

"When they get too big we are going to put them into the creek, but I don't want to. I want to name mine Miss Jelly Bean, but there is no way I can keep up with her unless I give her a tattoo, but she won't let me."---Jaime G.

Day Eight: Answering Questions

When I arrive at school, the first thing I always do is check on the aquarium. If a disaster has befallen us overnight, I want to be the one to discover it, not a student. So today I unlocked the door and headed in to check out the trout. When I looked into the basket ALL the trout eggs had hatched and were swimming frantically around in the basket. Should I let them out? I gently tilted the basket and none swam out. They just looked so crowded in there. And to complicate the matter, white bubbly foam that looked like soap bubbles had formed all around the basket and the inside of the aquarium. I was sure it was poison! I panicked! I called Robert Blankenship at way too early an hour and in a shaky out of breath voice I told him all the eggs had hatched and I was wondering what to do now. He was much calmer than I expected and assured me that he would stop by and have a look sometime during the day. I felt instantly better.

As promised, Robert and Ameka stopped by after lunch and answered all of our questions. This is what we learned. The orange stuff still stuck to the fish's stomach is actually the yolk of her own egg. This serves as nourishment for the fish for the first couple of weeks after hatching. The orange egg will get smaller as the fish grows. At this stage they are called alevin (pronounced ah-LAY-ven) or yolk fry. We don't need to feed them yet, because they have the egg yolk for food, and they will stay in the basket a while longer. With our questions answered, we sat back and relaxed and got ready to watch our new alevin grow.

Day Seven: Hatching!

Wow! We went to check on the eggs today and they had started hatching! Comments were flying amongst the students like "They look like orange tadpoles!" and "It looks like they have a dead egg on their stomachs!" They looked like eggs that had grown a fin and were swimming around the basket. We also observed lots of what looked like clear eggs floating around in the basket. We hypothesised that these were the shells of the eggs that had hatched. These observations were not made until late today, so we will wait and see if more are hatched tomorrow. We were especially surprised because we were told it would be two or three weeks until they started to hatch and as of today it has only been one week! Yippee!

Day Two

Yesterday when the eggs were delivered, one of the questions the students asked was "How can you tell if they are dead?" This became a concern from the first moment we discussed the project and I began talking about how we would use math to figure out the percentage of the trout that survived during the course of the project. "You mean some of them will die!?" Jacob asked as his puppy dog eyes stared into my soul where I was searching for the perfect teacher answer. So when the eggs were delivered, the class was very insistent on finding the clues that would let them know if one of our precious fish had passed. Robert told us the dead eggs are easy to spot because they will be white. Since the eggs are almost florescent orange we knew the white would stand out. Today, we found one bright white egg in the basket and one turning white on the gravel below. We used our tweezers to carefully remove the dead eggs to prevent fungus from growing. The kids were fascinated and so we used a magnifying glass to look at the egg we had removed. They had a lot more questions and we recorded them all to ask Robert and Ameka next time they come for a visit. (Photo taken by Jacob Sneed)

Our New Arrivals

Today our class at Cherokee Elementary School officially became a part of the nationwide program Trout in the Classroom when 500-600 bright orange trout eggs were delivered into our care. Robert Blankenship from the Cherokee Fisheries and Wildlife Management Tribal Trout Hatchery and Ameka Buchanan, an intern from Haywood Community College's Fish and Wildlife Management Technology program, brought the eggs wrapped in a simple damp paper towel. After checking to make sure the temperature of the eggs was within a few degrees of the temperature of the water, we began adding the eggs to the hatching basket which was hung on the side of the aquarium. Each student was able to put a spoonful of eggs into the basket. Once all the eggs were in the basket a question and answer session ensued and continued until we had to head on to PE. Over the next few months, we will be using this bog to chronicle our experience as we learn about and care for the Rainbow Trout.

For more information on this nation wide project, check out THIS page.