New project!

[OpusOstreae]

I just started a new job at an education center in SC, and one of my responsibilities is getting this fish room up and going. One freshwater (55 gal) and nine saltwater tanks, of various sizes-55 gallons down to 10 gallons. All the fish and "critters" are caught seining from the area (we have proper permits, no worries ). I figured I'd post and start asking for advice now, though we're just starting the room up. Any pieces of wisdom would be greatly appreciated! We currently have a flounder and a hermit crab in the touch tank in the middle, and a stone and blue crab in the 55 salt directly behind it, as well as some anemones in a ~30 gallon (homemade) tank that doesn't appear in this picture. Is there anything you know I should look for when seining? Any advice on keeping what's here? Etc?

 

[water_baby83]

YAY! I love doing this stuff. Ok so first - who is this room geared towards and do you have any interactive lesson plans/activities etc.?

Secondly, what do your permits allow?

Third, what are your limitations (aside from fish, i mean with the room in general)

I wish I was there, this would be fun!!!
I was hands on involved in re-structuring our discovery zone at the aquarium and starfish/ray touch pools. I love this stuff, lol.

 

[OpusOstreae]

The room is geared towards the students who come for our program-who have a pretty big age range. 5th-7th graders are the most common, but we can have students from 3rd-12th (older being rarer.) Right now, we teach a seining class, which often collects animals for this room; as it gets colder, we'll use this room for our seining/fish and estuary biology classes. Interaction is awesome, as much as is possible.

Our permits are scientific collection permits- for taking, holding, and propagating fish or other marine resources excluding any marine mammals for: (1) exploratory;
(2) experimental;
(3) scientific;
(4) educational; or
(5) commercial display purposes.



I'm still kind of puzzling out what kinds of limits we might have. So far, we've basically been keeping whatever looks interesting from our seining class.


The limits: the tanks, aside from the 60 gallon touch in the middle and a invert touchpool, are run on HOB filters, with carbon and sponges, and undergravel filtration. The 60 has a sump, the invert tank (which is homemade, and I'm still trying to figure out the volume!) has a canister filter. Frankly, I'm still figuring out filtration myself-I don't have that much experience with it. I need to work with the tanks we have: 3 55s, 2 35s, 1 25s, 1 10, and a 55 fresh.

The room doesn't have much space besides what you see. We have a ton of artifacts-shells, egg cases, etc, which I'd love to display, but I'm just not sure how to go about it. Organization can be tough, and is what I've spent most of my time up until now doing.


We currently have 1 blue crab, 1 stone crab in a 55, gravel substrate; 2 flounder, 2 hermit crabs, and some silversides in the middle tank, sand substrate; 6 anemones, 4 whelks, a sea cucumber and 2 mussels in the invert tank; and two shrimp, 3 sand dollars, and a 3 inch sea robin in a 25 with sand substrate.



Other limitations: money-we're a non-profit, and getting major supplies takes convincing my boss. Our animals are almost solely caught seining, and convincing other staff we don't have to keep this animal or that can be difficult. Also, all the info I can find on local species tends to be field guides-figuring out how to keep them, rather than just id them, can be a problem, but mfk can be helpful on that front



Thanks so much for your help! I'm so excited about this, but figuring out where to start is somewhat overwhelming.

 

[OpusOstreae]

I'm finally getting to move ahead on getting this place organized and set up, now that our tanks are up and running and the animals are surviving

So far: I'm hoping to paint the place. The mural's fun, but far from educational, and distracts from the actual animals. A friend who's in graphic design is making posters of some of the animals-sargassumfish, blue crab, anemones, sea stars, etc.

I'd like to get it to the point where we can teach classes in here. The only way that would be possible would be to redo the touch tank in the middle, freeing up the dead space of the table. That touch tank is two stacked baby pools with a black liner. So, my question: how difficult would it be to build an equivalent touchpool from acrylic, and what would be the cost? The current one's about 60 gallons, maybe 6 inches deep. Any other ideas? I'm just trying to improve it in whatever way I can. As is, kids climb the side, have trouble reaching the animals inside.

We have a ton of shells I'd like to display, but need to figure out how-any ideas?

If anyone has ideas for improvements, please let me know... I'm trying to get any possible ideas for pitching to the boss