Our bubbler broke but Mrs. Bukoski bought a new one with money from Trout Unlimited and PA Fish and Boat Commission.

We have had 2 students try and siphon the water by themselves and they were successful!  The rest of the class said they want to learn as well.  Mrs. Bukoski will gladly hand over the water changing job to the class. 

Marisa - The trout are getting bigger.  Some of the fish are feeding at the top and some are feeding at the bottom.

Britian - The ammonia and nitrites are going back down to zero.

Caleb D. - The nitrites are heading from 10 down to 5. 

Laekynn - The H20 testing is bumpy.  The levels are going up and down.

Mrs. Bukoski - The class is doing well with the water testing!

We started feeding them size 0 food and just switched them to size 1 food.  We noticed they wait for their food at the bottom and the top. 

The ones who didn't learn to eat died.  We have to siphon out the dead fish.  We also siphon out 4 gallons of dirty water a day and replace it with clean water.  The water must sit for 24 hours before we can put it in the tank to get rid of the chlorine.

Third graders taught us how to water test and now we are doing it on our own in groups.  We noticed some with crooked spines and two two-headed fish. 

Our new eggs arrived on November 5th and our total count was 344 viable, or alive, eggs. 

At this point they have all hatched and are now alevins.  They can't swim until they finish feeding off of their yolk sacs and become bigger and stronger.  They can't be exposed to light so they remain covered up.

Third grade students who participated last year will be coming back to help teach us how to test the water and graph the results. 

Look for future updates from the students.  Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Thanks for stopping by!

Mrs. Bukoski

Next, we walked back down to the creek and one at a time we got to say, "goodbye" and release our trout.  Mrs. Bukoski got to let 2 fish go and Mr.  Fendler released the rest.  Some hid under rocks, some hid under logs and some swam out in the open. 

After that, we each drew a sketch of their habitat in our journals.  We labeled our sketches with things we noticed such as: riffles, trees, rocks, logs, fish, dirt, slow-moving water, faster areas of moving water, twists and turns of the stream, and a clean area around the stream (no pollution!).  We talked about what they would need for protection, for food, oxygen, shade, and to avoid erosion of the creek bank. 

Then, we planted willow trees along the bank for shade and to help prevent erosion.  When we were done, we all got up-close to watch some of the trout in the water.  At this point, Nick decided to swim with the fish.  Ooops! 

We got together for a group picture and to say a big thank you to those who helped us with this project.  We ended our time there writing a letter to the trout in our journals saying what we'd miss, what we learned and what we might not miss (there wasn't much).  It was the perfect release day.

On top of this, we got to visit our penpals and have lunch and recess with them.  It was a great day and a great way to end this year-long project.  Thanks so much for all those who helped along the way!!

1. They are getting bigger, longer and stronger every day.

2. They are so strong we can't even suck them up when we are doing water changes.

3. (And Mrs. Bukoski loves this one...) The students are doing the water changes themselves daily.

4. The markings on the fish seem to be coming more distinct.

5. We haven't lost any fish in awhile.  They seem pretty stable.

6. They appear to be more intelligent, according to Nick.

7. We are feeding more food daily and larger size food as well.

8. The ammonia, pH, nitrites and nitrates are staying about the same.  No major spikes in the levels in our tank.

9. We have named more of them.  (Only the kids can identify them, though.  Mrs. Bukoski still has a hard time telling them apart.)

10.  They seem to be swimming faster.

11. We have a new stool to stand on to help with testing.

12.  We unfortunately broke our filter.  But Dr. Bell has assured us it will not be needed.

Our tank is doing well.  There have been no major concerns.  The testing has shown all of our levels to be staying about the same.  There hasn't been a lot of high spikes.

We are also starting to notice how some fish stand out from others.  One fish seems to be larger than the others and we call him "Skipper".  Check out his picture.  There is also a fish with 3 star like markings on it and we call him Buddy.  We'll keep you updated with other fish that we can recognize by their markings and name. 

Check out our water technician, Gabe.  He's in charge of our reverse osmosis water filtration system.  He monitors this all day, every day.