33 gallon, Cedar Lane Elementary

[Cedarlane]

I added my little avatar picture today. I just wanted you to know that there is a significance. The lion is our school mascot, so I figured that the Lion Fish could represent our school on the forum.

 

A big THANK YOU to Doug for taking time off work to give an awesome presentation to the entire 5th grade!

 

Rebecca

[jason the filter freak]

i still wish i had a saltwater tank in school when I was growing up...

[bigJPDC]

welcome Rebecca and WAY TO GO DOUG!!

[jason the filter freak]

Any plan of combat for the glass anems?

[dbartco]

I have to hit them with Joes. I did once when first set up, but need to do again every water change. Copperbands are out due to size. Perpermint Shrimp could be an option, yet that is hit or miss. I will be killing off a few tomorrow and take a few new pics. Fins and Feathers ordered a six line for the tank, need to see if it is in yet.

[davelin315]

Careful of the six-line, they have a tendency to go over the falls in a barrel, so to speak, especially in that tank set up. Not sure why, but I would attribute it to the fact that there are lots of critters that like to live on the edge where the overflow is and they hunt there.

 

Doug, if you have a copperband that can temporarily go in there, I had one a few years ago in there. It's a small space, but it's ideally suited to the type of hunting and pecking that a copperband does. If you can find one that's already eating, I would house it temporarily in there. I have found that they are also very easy to catch when the lights are off. Mine is so docile at night that I can simply reach down and pick it up. It's also very tame at this point, so I could probably reach out and pick it up regardless, but it might be a good option for that tank as a temporary solution until you get some peppermints for long term control.

[YBeNormal]

I have to hit them with Joes. I did once when first set up, but need to do again every water change. Copperbands are out due to size. Perpermint Shrimp could be an option, yet that is hit or miss. I will be killing off a few tomorrow and take a few new pics. Fins and Feathers ordered a six line for the tank, need to see if it is in yet.

 

I had a few aptasia in my 29g and was trying without success to eradicate them using Joe's Juice. I dropped in three peppermint shrimp and the problem was corrected within two days. I think the trick is to add several shrimp at once rather than just one and hoping for the best. What the heck, they're cheap.

[dbartco]

What the heck, they're cheap.

 

 

Thanks for donating! I will see if they have any at FF.

[dbartco]

Updated pics on the tank. It was really cool that they had to pick an animal for their reports, and some of them used a few things from my lecture. My gosh I got through to a few! Mostly it was a few bits and peices I took from the "truth about nemo" lecture we got a few years back. I also have to update the donor lists. Thanks again to everyone that has helped out. I am bummed that I have another tank where xenia just won't grow. I just can't understand why I can't grow weeds!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moving on the measurements and physical properties of matter, so we are coming up with other ideas on how to incorporate the tank into teaching that. Suggestions always welcome.

[zotzer]

How cool...it must warm your heart to see those reports!!

The tank looks awesome!

 

As for measurements and matter, specific gravity would be a good one....with a refractometer. Water bends at a certain angle depending on its density. (like putting a pencil in a water and watching it "bend"). The refractometer is a measurement device that works based on that same principle.

 

Tracy

[YBeNormal]

Looks like several future WAMAS VPs in that classroom!

[Cedarlane]

We have just started our unit on matter. This unit deals with measuring physical properties, states of matter and changes due to temperature, and atoms. After learning what matter, mass, volume, and density are and how to measure them, we did a lab where we observed and measured the physical properties of various objects. Of course, the most interesting objects were the ones provided by Doug Arthur. He brought in a coral skeleton (EXTREMELY COOL), two very colorful clam shells, and a bag of fine-grained sand. He also showed me a few things that I could remove from the tank for a while, and I used a large, reddish, mushroom-looking creature (sorry Doug, I can't remember the name). The students went wild when they got to explore and actually touch these unusual artifacts. Here are a few of the physical properties that the students observed about the mushroom-type creature. (If anyone knows the name of this creature, please post it so other people know what in the world I am talking about.)

 

Color- Reddish, brown

Estimated Size- About 4 inches long and 1.5 inches wide

Texture- Rough and bumpy like toad skin, feels like fine piece of sand paper, rubbery, squishy, feels like a dry tongue, tough

Mass- 82 grams, however we compared it to a wooden cube that we also measured as 82 grams and found that the wooden cube had a little more mass than the creature. This showed us that we were not exact enough in our measurements.

 

Edited December 14, 2007 by dbartco

[davelin315]

Hey Rebecca, it's a toadstool leather coral. One thing with matter is that it's interesting to show the kids that the leather coral actually has two different types of matter in it. The reason why it can expand and shrink so much compared to other organisms (such as a person, which cannot shrink) is that it is comprised of both solid matter and liquid matter. Through osmosis, it can expel water through its cells like a plant. This is a good opportunity to also introduce the concept of vascular and non-vascular - it can be compared to a non-vascular plant because it works through absorption and photosynthesis. Not sure exactly whether it's a non-vascular or vascular organism itself.

 

One tip on the pictures, hit return after each picture and they will be arranged so that the page is not stretched out.

 

Oh, and don't forget to use this opportunity to discuss density as the saltwater is much more dense than fresh water. You can also talk about dissolved solids, saturation, mixtures, solutions, and basic molecular structure through doing a water change. An interesting way to do volume as well is to consider using displacement. You can figure out the volume of the leather coral and rock by displacement and focus in on how solids and liquids differ as one takes the shape of its container while the other has a set shape and does not.

[Cedarlane]

So we are about to get into our Light and Sound Units. I know that there are lots of things that I could point out in the tank that are examples of the concepts in the units. However, I was hoping to include a few interactive experiments that center around the aquarium. The sound unit involves the ability of sound to travel through solids, liquids, and gases, but I am not sure if experiments with this would be harmful or stressful to the fish.

 

Doug, didn't you say that some of the corals will glow under a black light? If so, can you give me any information on this and does anyone have the right type of light that I could borrow?

 

I would appreciate any ideas. Thanks a million!

 

Rebecca

[davelin315]

Don't do sound experiments with the fish as the vibrations in the water are like getting your ears boxed. Their lateral line system will pick up the vibrations and really cause them problems.

 

One thing you can do, however, is study the fish themselves and examine the use of the lateral line system. It picks up minute vibrations, which, of course, travel much better through water than through air due to the density of the matter.

 

For light, you can use a lux or a par meter to measure the light penetration. Also, that tank has enough angles where we used to be able to observe rainbows in the corners when the light was being refracted.

 

Another thing you can do is to get some UV beads and show the kids that there are types of light that are beyond the visible spectrum. They can see the "white light" from the tank light, but they can't see the UV. It's easy to demonstrate the diffference by putting some beads under the light in the class and then under the light for the tank.

 

Trying to remember what else we have done with light and sound... refraction, guesstimate the size of something and then see how it's different in real life due to the bending of light.

 

For fluorescing the corals, simply use an actinic light or a "blue" lamp. I don't know if you have any supplemental light on there other than the metal halide, but we were never able to fit anything else on the tank other than the one lamp. I think I recall seeing some corals in your tank that would allow for fluorescing.

 

One other thing that is interesting, if you have the equipment, is to use a spectrometer to show the colors that are present in the lamp. Again, this breaks down the visible spectrum and shows that white light is comprised of the colors of the rainbow. Oh, and you can also use different colored filters if you have them to show how objects reflect, absorb, and transmit light.

[YBeNormal]

Actually, the kids could listen quietly to the sounds of the tank and ambient noise, then press their ears against the tank to hear how much louder the sounds are. This would demonstrate how well sounds are carried by water and shouldn't stress the fish. A small speaker next to a container of water could be used to visually demonstrate sound waves passing through water (deep bass sounds would work best).

 

The old pencil a glass is a great way to demonstrate refraction. Add some salt to the water to see how it affects refraction then use a marine refractometer to show how this principal is applied for useful purposes. You could mine this article for information about refractometers and maybe a few useful graphs and charts. If the tank has metal halide lighting, the shimmer affect is another example of refraction that they may not have noticed.

[Cedarlane]

We are currently in the middle of our Light Unit. While discussing the electromagnetic spectrum and ultraviolet light, I was able to use our aquarium to demonstrate that some types of coral respond well to UV light. The students thought that this was very cool, and were able to connect it to a similar demonstration that they saw at the Naturalist Center with rocks that glowed under UV light. Before I turned on the UV light I asked students to hypothesize which materials they thought would respond well to the light. The general consensus was that the softer corals and the chromis fish would glow. Students were a little disappointed that the fish did not glow, but they were very impressed by the bright greens and oranges from the other things in the tank.

 

On a side note, some of the students have taken to calling our Skunk Cleaner Shrimp "James Bond" because it likes to scale the side of the tank, hang upside down, and leap from the top of rocks. Again, they are thoroughly impressed!

 

 

 

 

[YBeNormal]

Thanks for the update Rebecca! I love the way you have integrated the tank into so many of your lessons. Few of my teachers were that creative and enthusiastic when I was growing up. Some of 'em could really swing a wooden paddle though. Ouch!

[jason the filter freak]

For a while I was running a t5 black light over my pico, you'll find if you pitch black the room the free floating plankton glows, makes an awesome effect.

[Cedarlane]

As we wrapped up our discussion of vertebrates and invertebrates, we thought about all of the different organisms in the classroom. Over the year I have gathered many animal artifacts, including several turtle shells, a preserved moth and rattle snake, several ocean creatures, my fresh water fish, and of course our fabulous aquarium. I also took this opportunity to bring in my pet corn snake to teach the kids a little about snakes. We discussed the distinguishing characteristics of each organism, decided whether they were vertebrates or invertebrates, and placed them into the smaller groups of vert. and invert. We were able to take over half of our example organisms from the aquarium, including the clown fish, snails, cardinal fish, watchman goby, skunk cleaner shrimp, chromis, capnella, royal gramma, sea anemone, torch coral, feather duster worm, tree coral, and toadstool mushroom leather coral. The students did very well with the coral and the fish, but the shrimp caused them a bit of confusion. They kept wanting to place it with the fish.

 

Today we started to learn about vascular and nonvascular plants. We did the classic experiment with putting flowers and celery into colored water to prove that they are vascular plants. I would like to send a big thank you to Chip Fredrick (the godfather of flowers) and Doug Arthur (leaped over tall buildings to get the flowers to our classroom) for making this experiment more affordable. Thank you for all of your help!! The kids thought it was an awesome experiment.

[jason the filter freak]

Any updates on this tank what becomes of a school tank over the summer months?

[dbartco]

Yeah, it is at my house. THE WIFE IS THRILLED to have another tank in the basement for the summer months!

 

I called in sick last week *cough**cough*, and transported the tank home. The tank had developed a bit of an aiptaisia problem, so I took it home so I could nuke the little buggars. I also bought a handful of peppermints at the social yesterday to try and help me out with this.

 

Admittedly, I really have to ask for more help with this tank next year. Once Bob finalizes the school program guidelines I will be applying for some of that. We also hope to strenthen the program next year, finding as many applications that conform to the SOL currriculum.

 

Any other questions, let me know.

[Cedarlane]

Well, another school year is beginning and we are about to welcome a very excited group of students into 5th grade. Last year, the 4th grade science teacher actually brought the students into our room to do a mini lesson with the aquarium, so many of the students are already familiar with the tank. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of Doug Arthur we have a good start to our tank. I have created a photo gallery on the 5th grade webpage with a few starter pictures of the tank. Feel free to check it out at:

 

http://cmsweb2.loudoun.k12.va.us/544208211...amp;NodeID=5931

 

Unfortunately, we had a few fatalities over the summer in the aquarium. The skunk cleaner shrimp and the royal gramma are no longer with us, may they rest in peace. The royal gramma was one of the most colorful fish that we had, and the shrimp was a favorite among the students and an excellent example for our invertebrate unit. If anyone would like to donate a replacement shrimp to our aquarium, we would greatly appreciate it. In fact, 5th graders tend to like to really gross, creepy looking creatures, so if anyone has any ideas we would appreciate that too. Just please keep in mind that they need to be fairly social fish. We got an awesome goby last year, but it always hid so the students never got to really observe it.

 

Towards the end of last year our clown fish finally started using the anemone as a "home." Thankfully, it still feels comfortable there, so the students will be able to observe this wonderful example of a behavior that exists in nature.

 

Last year the tank came into our room after our first unit, so I do not have any existing plans for using the aquarium for geology lessons. In our geology unit we cover erosion/weathering and the rock cycle. If anyone has any ideas on good demonstrations or experiments, please let me know. Thanks for all of your help WAMAS!

 

Rebecca

[davelin315]

Hi Rebecca, the rock in the aquarium is calcium based and the sand is also calcium based. The sand itself (if it's still the same stuff as when I had it) is a mixture of fine particles called oolitic sand which is rounded as well as larger grains which are rougher around the edges and are mechanically produced by crushing aragonite rock. You can also show examples of weathering and erosion through water flow and moving the sandbed back and forth. If you are able to, see if you can find a calcium reactor. This will allow you to demonstrate the processes of chemical weathering as it creates acid by adding carbon dioxide to the water, lowering its pH and thereby making it an acid (I believe it's carbonic acid?). This in turn melts the aragonite which is calcium based. You can also do this through the use of vinegar and kalkwasser. Since you have corals, you can also show how some types of rock are formed through the invertebrate's calcification.

 

If you need more ideas, let me know. It's nice to see that the tank is still being put to good use and that some of my "handiwork" survived the move from my classroom to yours, although I miss the marbling.

[davelin315]

Moving this one to the top!