They Look Like Fish At Last!

I saw the fish yesterday! They were all swimming around the top of the water! They look like fish at last!

Progress

Now that all of the fish have hatched, they're a little harder to find. Some should be reaching the end of the alevin stage, so their bodies are growing and the egg sac is shrinking. So far, they are doing very little swimming, but a few are starting to move around. We gave them a little food, but only one seemed to notice, so we don't think they're quite ready to eat yet.

All of the levels in our tank (temperature, pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate) seem to be holding steady so far. Our nitrite level has been 1.0 consistently since we set up the tank, which had us worried at first. Nitrite measures some pollution in the water and isn't good for the fish, so we'd like it to be at 0, however, we can't find the cause of the raised level, so we haven't been able to bring it down. Water changes don't seem to have any impact. One of our advisors suggested that maybe there's some limestone in the pea gravel we used and that could be the cause. In any event, it doesn't seem to be effecting the alevin so far, so we're just keeping an eye on it.

All of the kids in the school are tracking what's happening in the tank. It has been really exciting to watch! We're trying to get pictures of the fish to publish, but it's very hard to capture those little guys.

Report by Nature Club - We Rock!

Nature Club making fish faces for the camera.

Today, Gabby saw little brown squiggly things in the rocks. She realized that the brown squiggly things were actually fish. Ellie used a flashlight to count the fish in the tank. She found 1, Hannah W found 5, Margo found 27, Hannah A found 7. The counting group agreed that there were 28, but later revised the number to 33. Zoe says the fish are getting bigger. Margo thinks that some of them won't make it because they're still in the hatching basket. Ellie, Zoe and Hannah A said there are twins - two fish attached to one egg sac. Margo found 3 in a row exactly next to each other.