The Coral Reef Project At Stratton Elementary School

[Brandon Rutherford]

As Cindy mentioned, our kiddos had a great time at the aquatic experience expo

Cindy from Quality Marine gave a lot of my student leaders a personalized tour of the expo. I"m a little jealous they got to pick her brain to learn all of the secrets of reef keeping.

Chad from Reef Nutrition gave everyone in my group free t-shirts. Reed Mariculture sponsors my project by donating TDO food for all of our fish.

The touch tank was one of the most popular exhibits at the expo, I really wish I could keep horseshoe crabs alive for longer in my tanks at school. I forgot how weird they are.

I learned first hand that seals are cute and really smell

Special thanks to Quality Marine, Reed Mariculture and the World Pet Association for helping make this field trip possible.

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

We're culturing a ton of artemia now and our fish love them. I fed a bunch to our new clownfish though and they liked them so much some died! I swear this clownfish ate itself to death. It was swimming fine and then in front of my eyes, started twitching and died. Dude!

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

We had worn out most of our cloth filters and I thought I'd save some money by making my own filter socks. I bought a ton of 100 micron felt only to learn that it's way took thick for my wife's sewing machine (don't tell her I broke 6 needles trying). I've been staying up late into the night sewing by hand and it's taking forever.

 

[revhtree]

Man I wish I had a teacher like you when I were in school! Just awesome buddy!

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

My local news station just aired a news short on my project and science instruction. Check it out!

http://www.illinoishomepage.net/ciliving/champaign-teacher-inspires-students-to-explore-science

 

[NBcoralreef]

Maybe try to keep it stable at 72 and see what happens. Does your temp go up because of the light bring on?

It was the light that caused the algae. We tried to lower the amount of time that the light stayed on and it worked!

 

[Gomery12]

Just wanted to drop you a note. The 3 surviving saddlebacks have settled in and graduated out of the breeders net. This week 2 of them finally figured out that they could host the RBTA and now are comfortably playing in and around the RBTA! My snowflake didn't want anything to do with the RBTA! I'm losing the candy cane, not sure why? But the frogspawns and the zoas are doing great! I'd post some picks but not at home!

 

[chickofthesea]

Just wanted to drop you a note. The 3 surviving saddlebacks have settled in and graduated out of the breeders net. This week 2 of them finally figured out that they could host the RBTA and now are comfortably playing in and around the RBTA! My snowflake didn't want anything to do with the RBTA! I'm losing the candy cane, not sure why? But the frogspawns and the zoas are doing great! I'd post some picks but not at home!

I acquired some of those little clowns too. They are doing great. Did your other fish try to eat them? I still have mine in quarantine just to grow them up some more. I should try to put some in and see I guess but I would be sad if they became snack food.

 

[chickofthesea]

We had worn out most of our cloth filters and I thought I'd save some money by making my own filter socks. I bought a ton of 100 micron felt only to learn that it's way took thick for my wife's sewing machine (don't tell her I broke 6 needles trying). I've been staying up late into the night sewing by hand and it's taking forever.

The next time you need them sewed let me know. I have a surger machine that goes through like butter.

 

[Gomery12]

I acquired some of those little clowns too. They are doing great. Did your other fish try to eat them? I still have mine in quarantine just to grow them up some more. I should try to put some in and see I guess but I would be sad if they became snack food.

When I got them 2 didn't make the ride home and 4 survived. I added the 4 in and my six line wrasse went after them. Got one in his mouth. One, I was able to catch and the 2 others were small enough that they got into my overflow. I got the one out of his mouth, but he didn't make it. The two in the overflow ended up in the sump and I was able to get them there. I then put the 3 survivors in the breeders net waiting for them to get larger. About a 3 weeks ago, my six line wrasse, for whatever reason, took a hop out of the tank and was dead. Since he was gone, and the clowns were bigger and stronger, I let them out of the breeders net. Beginning of last week the smallest of the three I found hosting the RBTA, and then the largest of the three joined in this week. The other one still is in the same spot he's always stayed in. My other fish don't bother them. I have a snowflake clown, blue tang and green chromi.

 

[chickofthesea]

When I got them 2 didn't make the ride home and 4 survived. I added the 4 in and my six line wrasse went after them. Got one in his mouth. One, I was able to catch and the 2 others were small enough that they got into my overflow. I got the one out of his mouth, but he didn't make it. The two in the overflow ended up in the sump and I was able to get them there. I then put the 3 survivors in the breeders net waiting for them to get larger. About a 3 weeks ago, my six line wrasse, for whatever reason, took a hop out of the tank and was dead. Since he was gone, and the clowns were bigger and stronger, I let them out of the breeders net. Beginning of last week the smallest of the three I found hosting the RBTA, and then the largest of the three joined in this week. The other one still is in the same spot he's always stayed in. My other fish don't bother them. I have a snowflake clown, blue tang and green chromi.

Don't tell Brandon "wink wink" but the bta he have me was accidentally toren. But no worries I now have 2, all grown back and eating well. I think I will move the smaller of the 2 in with the babies. I almost punched myself when I tore a piece off but now that I have 2 i'm happy.

 

[NBcoralreef]

I wish I was able to post a video to show what was going on in my tank today. Anyways, the hermit crab kept on climbing over the starfish who was just fed...the reason, the crab wanted to eat the food that was meant for the star. No matter how many times I moved it off of the starfish, it kept on coming back. So greedy!

 

[chickofthesea]

Don't tell Brandon "wink wink" but the bta he have me was accidentally toren. But no worries I now have 2, all grown back and eating well. I think I will move the smaller of the 2 in with the babies. I almost punched myself when I tore a piece off but now that I have 2 i'm happy.

Here is the best pic I could get of the big one. The smaller one is now in with the baby saddlebacks and so far only the largest of the group of 13 hosts it. I wonder if that one will end up being the female of the group? I'll try to post pics of it. I am having trouble with my photography skills for now though.

 

[chickofthesea]

I wish I was able to post a video to show what was going on in my tank today. Anyways, the hermit crab kept on climbing over the starfish who was just fed...the reason, the crab wanted to eat the food that was meant for the star. No matter how many times I moved it off of the starfish, it kept on coming back. So greedy!

Those crabs are really really good eaters.

 

[chickofthesea]

here's a picture of one of the baby Saddleback clowns that you guys gave me, it's hosting the anemone Mr Rutherford gave me. The other ones are doing good too. They are in the same tank but get chased away from the anemone. The one in the anemone is about 50% larger than the others.

 

[NBcoralreef]

Those crabs are really really good eaters.

In fact, it is so good that it knows how to get its fill.

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

Hey RTR followers. Been super busy with many other teacher things but I wanted to do a quick couple of posts.

Our project was featured on another local news channel at the end of last year. Here's the link

I've been trying to culture more tig pods to feel our larval clownfish and stock our refugiums. From one sample Reef Nutrition sample I now have a heavily populated 5 gallon culture that I'll soon split. I was told by several people to be careful to not introduce rotifers or brine shrimp to the tig pod culture but as an experiment I put some tig pods in my rotifer cultures and the tig pods do fine. They're super easy to seperate from rofiers because of the size difference. I also learned that Tig Pods like to hang out in the bottom and benefit from have some goo down there to eat. I feed them Reed Mariculture Rotogrow and APBreed size powered food.

I've been wanting to create a logo for my project for a while. Recently I tasked my student Evani to design one and here's what she came up with. Next week a local screen printer will be leading a printing workshop in my classroom and we'll use a silkscreen to make 5x8 inch handbills with this image. I hope to include the handbills in clownfish sales to promote my project.

I recently tripled the light both of my large refugiums and had a tremendous drop in nitrates. I have do about 1/2 of the water changes I used to to control nitrates in these tanks. I'm happy to divert the salt to my clownfish grow out tanks. As the fish grow, nitrates have been extremely hard to manage. One tank needs about 60% -80% of it's water changed throughout the week to keep Nitrates under 10ppm. If I"m going to continue to scale up my fish breeding setup I definitely need to build bigger tanks with sumps to incorporate some kind of nitrate sink.


Here's a picture of the refugium on the back of my 300 gallon system. Since I took this photo the chaeto has doubled.

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

Throughout this last school year I've hosted 4 painting parties where undergraduate volunteers from the U of I have come to my classroom to paint with Stratton students. Each time over 100 people have attended. It's a ton of work for me but we get some super cool paintings out of it. I recently donated 20 to the university of Illinois to be framed and displayed in the Beckman Institute, a famous research lab. I'm going to donate the paintings below available to anyone that will professionally frame the painting and display it in a public setting.

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[Brandon Rutherford]

#8

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#10 (my personal favorite of this batch)

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[Merck]