updates from my school's coral reef project

[brandoniscool]

<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/123160683" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="https://vimeo.com/123160683">2015.03.23 - stratton coral reef project</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user38678251">Gregory Pluta</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

 

[brandoniscool]

Our fundraiser stalled at $992 about $500 short of our target. We've spent the last two weeks writing letters to aquarium stores around country to share word of our GoFundMe campaign. Look for posters in a reef store near you.

 

[brandoniscool]

My kids are learning how to shot and produce basic videos. One team did a video about the project and I thought I should share it. If you can get past the shaky video, it's pretty cute.

<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/127109860" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[liverock]

Morphing education

Morphing education

Brandon

It is pretty neat that this project you started with your reef tank has morphed into many different worlds of education for your kids.

Now they artists, creative writers, husbandry patrons,videographers, and stewards of our marine ecosystems and really interested in learning more. That deserves a big pat on the back.

And more amazing is you still have the orange tree sponge alive. You are on the same page as D2mini in your sponge longevity ability.

Conrats and keep up the good work!

Richard TBS
www.tbsaltwater.com :spin3::spin3::spin3:

 

[coralsnaked]

Private schools ROCK !!!

 

[brandoniscool]

Stratton Carnival

Stratton Carnival

Stratton Elementary School had an end of the year open house and my kiddos were able to share their learning with many families that haven't been able to see our project. I moved several of my nano tanks to the main hallway of our school and setup microscopes where people could view tiny brittle stars, copepods, rotifers, brine shrimp, bristle worms and more. We also brought out some of our larger inverts for people to touch.

Took this dad about 5 minutes to talk his daughter into touching an urchin. She was pretty scared at first then was all smiles.

Leon doing some public outreach.

We have a lot of recently immigrated Congolese students at Stratton. Several I talked to have never seen the ocean or even knew that some of the things we have in our tanks existed.

Aislin (in background) worked hard to provide information to people as they checked out our stuff.

 

[brandoniscool]

donations from Dave

donations from Dave

A local Reefer Dave just graduated from high school and donated all of the livestock in his 30 gallon tank to the project before he goes off to college. He has beautiful animals including a huge carpet anemone and a mated pair of saddleback clownfish.

More and more my project is becoming a community effort. I promised Dave that we will just petsit his fish and corals and when he graduates he can come back for them. We'll be here!

 

[brandoniscool]

another video

another video

<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/127274505" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="https://vimeo.com/127274505">Stratton's coral reef project</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user28704363">Brandon Rutherford</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

Here's another video made by some of the students at Stratton.

 

[brandoniscool]

updates from my project

updates from my project

Hey Reef Central.

Long time no post, I've been busy writing curriculum and teaching reading intervention in a Title One summer school class. But my project is going great and all of my tanks have been stable and healthy.

This spring we launched a fundraiser and hand wrote letters to over 60 marine aquarium stores across the country.

Unfortunately, not one responded. But lots of our friends and followers came to the rescue and donated, notably Tal Sweet, Quality Marine and AlgaeBarn.com. And thanks to a very, very generous discount from Quality Marine, my project ordered a huge amount of inverts and fish to stock our new tanks.

We set our QT tanks up in advance and everyone was counting the days until the shipment arrived.

And finally it arrived, everything alive and healthy.

All of the students who have tanks in their classrooms came to see the unboxing and we carefully held the bags for a group picture.

 

[brandoniscool]

And here's some photos of our tanks that I took today. The quarantined fish haven't made it in yet, giving them 6 weeks just to be safe. But with one sad exception, all are very healthy and getting fat with great skin and fins.

The 120 gallon downstairs by the office, note our Jellyfish Art tank to the left.

Our big long tentacle anemone and paired clownfish.

Here's 50 gallon fresh water tank with tetras that doesn't get a lot of attention but is a breeze to maintain.

The 90 gallon in a neighboring classroom with all of the equipment generously donated by Ecotech. This tank has 6 chocolate chip starfish in our sump for kids to handle. This tank
is low on fish and getting stocked from our recent fundraiser.

The 180 display tank in my room with over 10 anemones in it.

 

[brandoniscool]

My 180 has a 120 gallon DIY sump plumbed in with a big bed of chaeto and some corals I'm saving for my next tank.

 

[liverock]

Amazing teacher

Amazing teacher

Great job Brandon....you have come light years from when we first interacted...glad to see some of the gorgonians are still going...are you fragging them?

Nice to see quality Marine come through for you so magnificently.... kudos to them!

You have done so much for your kids.....this world needs many more like you....


Sea ya
Richard TBS
www.tbsaltwater.com

 

[reef_aholic]

This is such a great story, good on you, looks like a blast!

 

[brandoniscool]

questions from Aly

questions from Aly

Hello Reef Central,

Today was the first day of school and many many children were wowed by our project. The acrylic on our 120 gallon reef tank was completely smeared with handprints from kids pointing out things to each other.

I also heard cute stories from several teachers about how their students were excited to come back to school because they wanted to see how their fish and corals grew over the summer. I was able to add some fish and inverts to most because of help from Quality Marine. I'm now in the process of building a starfish and urchin touch tank in a kindergarten classroom and setting up another 29 gallon tank in a second grade classroom.

I have a few kids that are already standing out as reef keeping leaders. One of which is my student Aly. I tutored Aly in reading over the summer and now have arranged for him to stay after school each day. He's an inquisitive dude and noticed this afternoon that our Black Saddleback Clownfish pair have spawned for the first time. He had some questions and since I don't know much about rearing fish I thought I'd direct them to you all.

Here's Aly:

Here's a bad picture of where the eggs have been placed:

Here's Aly's questions:

 

[mushumatt]

This is awesome!!! I wish when I was in school they had something like this. I did a project in my bio class in high school. Setup and maintained a nano reef. Opened my teachers eyes to Sw tanks, later that year he setup a 40 gallon mixed reef. He tried to "take" my corals and fish in the nano haha. Keep it up!!

 

[brandoniscool]

Last week was very exciting for my project. I'm cycling two next 29 gallon tanks in a second grade and kindergarten classroom. I hope both will have some hearty inverts the kids can handle frequently.

Aly will soon master water testing and I have two new student leaders, Jake and Gene who will start staying after school this week. My project will formally be part of the daily curriculum in October and some kiddos have been learning bits and pieces of reefing through to books they read and notes they take off of youtube.

Alas, there have been some saboteurs at work though. A kindergartner keeps putting trash in his new tank and I don't really have a tool to stop him. And after spending 3+ hours working on the project this afternoon, I check my 120 gallon reef in the front of the school and find someone scratched up the acrylic!

Kids sometimes! :mad2:

 

[brandoniscool]

I was very happy to see a lot of the school rally around the tanks to protect them from vandalization. Now have a hundred student 'guardians' that will keep a lookout, made them all promise not to get carried away with their duties.

Our black saddle back clownfish spawned for the second time in the exact same place. They laid their eggs on a rock too big to move but next time I'm going to place a tile there and hopefully be able to move the eggs out. Once our rotifer culture is stable again maybe we can rear them.

The tank in the kindergartner classroom just finished cycling. It's a fluval accent with an added canister filter and skimmer. Going to put some clown fish in it as a place holder until I can raise some money for an order of a selection of inverts. Hope the fill this and one other with touchable starfish, shrimp and hermit crabs. The kindergartners are pretty excited.

 

[theatrus]

Bummer on the scratches. Need some novus polish?

 

[brandoniscool]

got some fish

got some fish

Two new students, Gene and Jake, are also are interested in becoming student leaders and they stayed after school today to do water testing that confirmed that two of our newly set up tanks are almost done cycling.

We did 40% water changes on the QT tank in my room that I have ready for our next fish order and the new 25 gallon tank in a second grade classroom.

Unfortunately the kindergarten tank is still not ready.

Then Gene and her mom gave me a ride to my friend Justin Rhodes's lab where we looked around and picked up some of his new juvenile clownfish.

We were able to take a netful back to school on loan. I'm going to use them to keep my QT tank and the two new tanks cycled until we can stock them with touchable invertebrates.

One of his grad students was successfully able to captive breed a new type of clownfish. Thought I'd include a picture.

 

[brandoniscool]

Live Rock (tbsSaltwater) gave us an awesome donation two years ago that was packed full of very unusual things. Every once in a while, something not often spotted makes an appearance from the depths. I haven't seen the spiny sea cucumber that he sent since last fall until it came out yesterday.