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.
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