The Coral Reef Project At Stratton Elementary School

[brandon429]

favorite fish is the cowfish
my tanks are way too small, we do corals only, but if I had room for a fish it would be that strange looking cowfish.


Id like to ask back:

What have you and your research team found to be the most important aspect of making a reef tank live as long as possible? Some might say doing good water changes. Some might say the ideal skimmer or filtration system, and each reef keeper formulates their own take after having done the hands on stuff you do, and document so well.

We enjoy having your team boost our resources here


Brandon M

 

[revhtree]

This is amazing! I'm inspired by all of you young aquarium hobbyists from Stratton elementary!

Now I have a question for you!

If you could have one thing in your reef tank right now that you don't have already what would it be?

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

Hey Brandon, Here's some answers to your questions from Gene, Jake and Swapnil.

 

[brandon429]

how fun is this! Your team is well-versed in reefing and we are pretty impressed at the natural way they take to it. the setup you all maintain as an actively busy team exceeds that which I had to learn on in our hometown college and clearly your mode of plant export is working, nice job mimicking the natural reef. When mr parrotfish or turtle comes along and rasps off some algae, that's similar harvest and all part of this great profound nutrient wheel we all model, with our models of varying volume!!

thoroughly motivated by meeting you all~

Gene, Jake and Swapnil I watched your videos with a smile as big as your reef. my whole family is being shown this in 3...2...1
B

 

[paraletho]

+1 to Brandon Rutherford. From an 8 year school board member Sabine Pass Independent School District. 4 years running Texas State UIL Academics Champions 1A. You sir epitomize what needs to happen through this whole country. Science is not just read and tested. Real science is lived and experienced.

 

[drwhite]

Great work! My sons are doing the same at their school, Silverdale Baptist Academy. Email me: [email protected]. I would like to share information that I have found regarding grants available.

 

[brandon429]

thread going viral 3..2..1

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

Science is not just read and tested. Real science is lived and experienced.

This statement is so true. Working with kids has helped me understand how much I take my life experience and knowledge for granted as I navigate the world around me. Not much is new and I usually have the background knowledge to easily make the connections needed to solve problems. Children don't have this background and are constantly being bombarded with unknown phenomenon that they must figure out with little or no clues (or help). They are natural scientists and informally use complex techniques to figure out biology and physics.

Stratton is a Title One school and only 25% of its student body passed state assessments in math and reading last year. The kids feel stupid and generally tune out formal instruction. I think it's important that science be considered as a perspective or methodology rather than some kind of formal discipline that one must understand first before using. Because reef aquariums are dynamic, students caring for them constantly cause problems that need to be addressed or find new things they want to study. Kids get into it and often without their knowledge they find they are doing complex science.

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

Just to catch some of the R2R members up with the history of the project, I'll post some pictures from the past.

I started the project as a fairly new and desperate teacher. I was working at another high poverty school and felt like my students had entirely checkout of the educational process. I tried all of the traditional teaching techniques, read all of the right books, asked for advice and still nothing was working. After spending a lot of money on educational gimmicks, I picked up a 5 gallon tank at a garage sale and put it in my classroom. The response was immediate and positive. Kids who never studied would check out and read books about fish and all of the wannabe thugs would patiently wait their turn to feed the fish or clean the tank. I immediately leveled up to a 30 gallon freshwater and within a year bought a used 120 gallon tank setup with livestock on Craigslist for 1K.

Here's my setup a year in. I jammed my tank with corals purchased from craigslist or local petstores and all of my equipment was falling apart.

My old school wouldn't let me instal an RO unit and I was filling buckets at home and bringing them to school each day. My wife Lauren hated it.

 

[brandon429]

The corals shown there are larger colonies than most tanks of the month, as additional standout details.

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

My old school was newly built with a magnet grant and was the pride of the community. I would come in on the weekends and find kids from the neighborhood peeking in through the window at the tanks.

The kids of course were super into it and constantly had their hands in the tank. It took me a long time to develop some kind of aquarium care system and there was a lot of water spilled, over feeding and unhappy corals.

Fortunately I had a lot of people who came to the rescue and helped out with donations and technical help including LRS Reef Frenzy and Quality Marine who were my first supporters.

 

[chickofthesea]

Kids do learn fast, faster than adults. One of the reasons they are so interesting to work with.

I prefer LED lights and all of our big tanks have one model or another. The project is funded by my own salary and donations. I've been lucky with light donations from Kessil, EcoTech and Tunze. My smaller tanks have cheap T5 fixtures I stole from the 5th grade teachers. They're were provided them a while back for a photosynthesis unit but never use them.

We frequently setup temporary tanks and discuss variations in livestock health and water quality. Because my kids do most of the maintenance, there is a lot of variation that already occurs in our systems (sometimes bad variations). Observing the affects of changes in quality of care makes our tanks a constant experiment though I do step in when needed to make sure tanks don't crash. One of our biggest problems is nutrient exportation because the kids love to feed things. I use GFO, pellet reactors and am setting up refugiums in our largest tanks. I still need to 20% water changes weekly to keep things clean.

We also had a cool mantis shrimp tank for while until a malfunctioning heater killed it.

Andrew is feeding rotifers to our 30 gallon mantis tank

It got pretty big before the end. It's in a 5 gallon bucket if that helps for scale.

Did the mantis die too?

 

[chickofthesea]

My favorite fish is the chalk bass. What's yours?

 

[chickofthesea]

You all know me by Cass. How are the jellyfish? I need to come in and visit. I hate the cold but I miss coming. Who still has their beta fish? I do. See ya soon.

 

[ReefFrenzy]

My project is supported with a lot of my personal money and coming in everyday over the summer sucks. But it's all worth it.

It has been really awesome to support this project since the beginning and I have had the opportunity to meet many of these kids (and Brandon) in person on two occasions. I think the world of Brandon and one of the things that people may not know is that at one point Brandon mentioned he put over 30% of his own salary back into the program to keep it going. THAT kind of dedication deserves our support so I encouraged Brandon to come to R2R because I know the great folks over here will help spread the word about his program and hopefully gain him charitable contributions in the way of used equipment or supplies like salt and chemicals. (I've got the food covered ) I have been following his thread on the "other" forum and thought he would generate even more support over here with this community. I am glad to see everyone giving him such a warm welcome.

The best part of being a sponsor is the kids make you cool stuff like posters for your shop!

 

[mcmc1717]

Those are some beautiful aquariums.

 

[joshkirkland83]

It has been really awesome to support this project since the beginning and I have had the opportunity to meet many of these kids (and Brandon) in person on two occasions. I think the world of Brandon and one of the things that people may not know is that at one point Brandon mentioned he put over 30% of his own salary back into the program to keep it going. THAT kind of dedication deserves our support so I encouraged Brandon to come to R2R because I know the great folks over here will help spread the word about his program and hopefully gain him charitable contributions in the way of used equipment or supplies like salt and chemicals. (I've got the food covered ) I have been following his thread on the "other" forum and knew he would generate a lot more support over here with this community. I am glad to see everyone giving him such a warm welcome.

The best part of being a sponsor is the kids make you cool stuff like posters for your shop!

Yeah, how about a wishlist or items you guys need??

 

[pondman]

All I can say is Outstanding tanks.My hats off to you for what your teaching your students.It is a valuable lesson that they will take with them always.Keep up the good work and happy reefing

 

[Chad Clayton]

Great stuff Brandon! The team here at Reed Mariculture is glad to be a part of this educational bonanza!

 

[2xal]

This really put a smile on my face. How about a ship to address and a wishlist. Even with my own 3 kids in elementary school, I would like to try and support your endeavors. I have A LOT of extra stuff that have accumulated over the years. Helping these kids learn is so much better than sitting in my basement.

You've shared pictures and video of tomorrow's marine biologists. You helped create them. Hats off and kudos.