Field Reports

Several of our participating schools this year will be raising their brook trout eggs in a vibert box while others will be using the standard net breeder for egg hatching.  We will be assessing the differences, if any, between these two styles of in-tank egg hatching.  See the pictures of vibert boxes in a tank below. 

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Glen Meadow Middle School in Vernon, Sussex County, will be graduating a class of 375 brook trout into the community. The trout will be released into Wawayanda Creek on Saturday morning, May 26th.

Watching the fish grow beyond their egg stage in the fall to vigorous swimming machines has been enjoyable and educational. A visitors journal has been kept since the Brook Trout arrived six months ago and over 300 students, teachers, and community friends have since visited the fish and signed the brookie guest book. A strong turn out is anticiapted to watch the Brook Trout as they are released.

Feeding the fish has now become a much anticiapted daily class event. The fish splash water out of the tank and regularly leap out of the water for food. The fish are now 3 to 4 inches and seem ready to move out of the classroom and into the open swimming spaces of New Jersey.

As a first year experience, raising trout in the classroom is not without some challenges - PH and ammonia tests, cleaning pump pre-filters, sustaining optimum water temperture (52-56F) levels, removing bio-mass gunk created by the growing fish, and wiping down the inside tank walls are all the work part. Coming to know more about the life and environment of the New Jersey State fish, the Brook Trout, is the well worth-it reward part.

We still have well over 100 fish estimated, and they are most about 3inches or so in length. Our most recent problem this week has been a bit alarming. We continue to find multiple fish (5-10 per day) stuck in the filter tubes. We were wondering if perhaps their population number along with their growing size is beginning to crowd them too much, causing their bodies or tails to get sucked into the filter. What are your thoughts on this? Everything else seems to be fine. Hoping to release in mid-May!

Hunterdon County Polytech is having problems with cloudy water. The water quality is OK, and has not diminished. Our levels for everything are near 0, but our water is extremely cloudy and dirty. We do water changes everyday. I think it is due to the number of fish we have, we still have over 100 fish. Any suggestions for the cloudy water?

Thanks

Taryn Romanczak

Gill St. Bernard’s School has an easy estimate of about 200 survivors as of February 25! They are growing in size, and we can only assume that there is occasional cannibalism going on, since we never seem to find any dead, and some are growing bigger than others. Water quality has only been an issue in terms of keeping the pH constant. Our main benefit though has been that the water we are using is water we hauled up in buckets and containers from the trout stream that runs through our campus. We did a water change in late December just before our holiday break, and plan to do another one in about a week, just prior to our spring break. Filter changes are more frequent lately, and the chiller vents are cleaned out periodically as well (as the dust tends to accumulate in there!). Some other differences in our tank might be as follows: the rocks at the bottom are also stream rocks, and we have 2 filters running at all times. Our initial filter was broken upon delivery, and so I used another one that had come with the tank. When a replacement arrived, we continued to keep both filters operating together.

Our younglings are doing well! We have approximately 60 still remaining. Everyday for about 15 minutes during recess three "Trout Inspectors" take readings and perform various tasks. Our class just finished studying the external anatomy of the Brook Trout.
Shortly we’ll studying the internal anatomy with a dissection lab. If anyone has performed the dissection on the internal anatomy, I would certain welcome any assistance in obtaining specimens, virtual lab sites,etc. Also any helpful hints on the microinvertebrate study would also be appreciated.
This has been a great experience for the students!!

Mr. Ludwig’s and Mrs. Scibetta’s 5th Grade Class