classroom captive breeding program

[hobogato]

ok, so after some long thoughts about how to make my classroom setup and practices more environmentally friendly, i have decided to make it a captive breeding setup.

in case you have not seen it, here is a link to the setup. in years past, student groups would be responsible for populating (using their own money for livestock) a tank, maintaining the tank and its livestock all year, and selling that livestock at the end of the year. this process proved environmentally (and economically) unfriendly. therefore, we will be shifting gears and trying something new.

we (the students and i) will be incorporating live food cultures like pyto, artemia, rotifers, and possibly mysis as well as a grass shrimp colony in the large sump/fuge.

all of the large predator fish remaining in the large display tank will likely be donated to the SA zoo so we can establish a reef and start propagating corals as well.

so far on the list of propagation and breeding are the following

various soft corals and possibly stonies eventually
cuttlefish (S. bandensis)
seahorses (not sure, lots of research to do here)
clownfish
bangai cardinals

we have space for several more species, but have not researched what else we attempt.

 

[kerusso316]

There are more mouth brooders that you can try.Pearl Head Jawfish for example. Also Bergiah Nudie's are easy & fun.

 

[hobogato]

thanks for the ideas! any others are welcome....

 

[Beaun]

Dottybacks and Gobies have been breed in captivity (ORA), not sure how easy they are though.
-Orchid Dottyback
-Striped Dottyback
-Sunrise Dottyback
-Neon Dottyback
-Springer's Dottyback

-Neon Goby
-Yellow-line Goby
-Canary Blenny
-Red Head Goby
-Greenbanded Goby
-Citron Goby
-Yellow Clown Goby

Longspine and Pajama cardinals as well, but you already have bangai, not sure if you want different cardinals.

 

[hobogato]

ok, after some cleaning by myself and some of the students, we are getting close to having the tanks in shape to add livestock.

this is the coral prop tank, once i get the lights working again, i can move the corals in that have been donated already.

some of the corals that have been donated - includes several frags of zoanthids, palys, shrooms and leathers

as you can see, we still have some algae to clean up after going all summer with little maintenance.

here are some pics of the system - notice we have cleaned the sand and rock out of the bottom tanks as they will function as nurseries for the fish/critters we hope to raise.

here is where we will be establishing a grass shrimp colony

some of these tanks will likely be used to establish a mysis colony and pod growing area

here is the first pair of fish coming in today with their anemone. hopefully we can get the clowns to start spawning and the anemone to start splitting so we can propagate them also

acclimating

in the tank

THANKS AGAIN BILL(mangroves, clowns, and anemone), JACK(corals), RYAN(corals), RICHARD(sand) AND VIET-TIN(sand) FOR YOUR DONATIONS!!!

 

[CoralKingdom]

Very cool colors in the anemone. I can't wait to see more!

 

[reefstew]

It's not to hard to get fish to spawn but the fry can be more difficult from one kind to another. Skip the dottybacks & try clown fish or bangaii cardnals.

 

[NANOYED]

I wanna go back to Highschool for another reason now!! Where was this class at? I had to cut open a damn frog and your starring at corals and watching fish do it! ***!!

 

[hobogato]

lol nanoyed

today, we got the coral prop tank rockwork done, the students finished cleaning and arranging the small tanks, and they attached all of the frags from pete onto small pieces of liverock.

coral prop tank - once i get the lights running, we can move the frags in

dry rock that the student will break up to grow the frags on

gluing the frags

all the frags in the container (this took three class periods to complete, i just took pics each time they filled the transfer container. each rock has anywhere from 1 to 10 polyps or a single shroom or other coral.

here are all of the corals and frags we have so far

 

[rkelman]

I would have skipped the sand in all those tanks. Especially the frag tank. It just makes it hard to keep them clean. None of them look deep enough to be a DSB. Maybe do a RDSB instead. The less time you spend cleaning the more time is spent learning.

 

[hobogato]

thanks, but the sand in the small tanks is just about 1" deep and there are many snails in them to maintain the sand. the sand in the coral prop tank is almost 6" deep - plenty to function as a dsb.

the reason they look so dirty in the pics up top is because they had not been touched all summer. they are nice and clean now and require minimal maintenance. hopefully when i get the macroalgae and mangroves to take off in the fuge, there will be even less cleaning mainenance.

 

[D3monic_Urges]

I would be nervous about that many kids handling coral. I see pics of one without gloves. I strongly advise making latex or neoprine gloves mandatory whenever a student handles anything within the aquariums. Theres just too much liabilty and things that can go wrong. All it takes is a kid to wipe his nose with some palytoxin on his hand and next thing you know its a field trip to the ER.

 

[hobogato]

that is a good point, and i agree that would be a good policy with the handling of corals. i did talk to the students about the dangers before hand and watch them while they were working, but gloves would have been a better idea. thanks!

 

[hobogato]

just received a donation of three captive bred maroon clowns.

here they are in a 5 gallon bucket until i can get them up to the school tomorrow morning.

more pics tomorrow when i get them acclimated and in the tank at the school.

 

[espocrespo]

looks a very cool project :fish2:

 

[hobogato]

ok, here are a few pics of the tanks now that the students and i got them all cleaned up. also, got the lights working on the coral prop tank and moved the frags in.

we are going to keep the new gsm clowns in one of the rearing tanks until they get a little bigger

here they are acclimating

i had to rig a cover on the drain to make sure they dont get washed away - still working on a more permanent fix

here they are in the tank (all three are visible in that pic )

here is each one

here is an update pic of the oscillaris pair and the rbta

the coral prop tank - the lights are 400w SE, 20K on the left and 10K on the right

the rest of the tanks all clean and shiny

 

[hobogato]

ok, most of our critters came in today, so here is what we have in the program now:

here they are drip acclimating

one potter's angel (the 2nd one didnt make it )
a pair of tessellated blennies

a pair of flame angels

a pair of royal gramma

a pair of fire shrimp

a pair of skunk cleaner shrimp

a pair of rainbow pseudochromis

a pair of bangai cardinals

a pair of green mandarins (i counted over 50 pods on the front glass of the tank they went into)

 

[hobogato]

cant forget about the oscillaris pair and their rbta

the gsm clowns and their gbta

and the 10 cuttle eggs

still to be added are jawfish(6 in the coral prop tank) dwarf seahorses and pipefish

 

[rkelman]

Wow everything is looking great. I wish I had this when I was in high school.

 

[olin]

Looks fantastic! I ran a classroom marine aquaculture project for a couple of years when I taught high school. If I may be so bold, I'd like to offer a couple of things I learned that worked for me - take em or leave em as you like.

The second year, for classroom management, I organized the students into teams, we had a fish health and water quality team, a plankton production team, larviculture team etc. Taught them about teamwork and coordination, and it helped keep everyone on track. Each team was also responsible for designing and implementing at least one experiment in their area of "expertise". So for instance we had a study that looked at bacterial growth and water quality comparing live algae feeding to algae pastes, one that did growth rates of larvae with different feeding regimens etc. We won a lot of science fairs that year!

Also, might want to add a couple of "sure-thing" species to your group. We started with gobies (Gobiosoma chiquita) because they will start spawning within days of addition rather than months like the clowns. Also peppermint shrimp are great - they are much easier than the ones you have in there, albeit much lower on the cool scale. Good choice on the dwarf seahorses - easy and everyone loves em. Those were the favorites for my class.

If there's any way I can help you all out, please feel free to drop me a line - I'm a big proponent of aquaculture education.