The growth of the brook trout popoulation and their interactions are an interesting topic to study. When the eggs first hatched, there was more than a hundred of the young trout. However, as they grew, their population went down.
When counting the population of the fish in the tank, we ran into some trouble. Although it sounds strange to have trouble counting fish, we found that the fish blend in to the rocks used at the bottom. At first we tried to count from left to right as fast as we could. It was a practical method, but wasn't working because the trout would swim around, making us unsure of what fish we had counted and what fish had not been counted. To try and counteract this, we put food in the water to try and get the fish to swim to the top and eat while we counted. This technique didn't have very much success as the fish would swim to the top one or two at a time, seeing as how all the fish didn't realize that food had been put into the tank. This method of counting was also unsuccesful because the fish became more agitated when food was put in and they moved around more, making it more difficult to count them. One method that we may try in the future is to take a picture of the fish and then count them all.
About two weeks ago Mr. Foster came into our school to feed our fish daphnia. About six kids came after school and we watched a very interesting powerpoint about daphnia. Before we watched it we isolated three fish into 3 seperate beakers and put blue paper around each beaker to soothe them. After we watched the powerpoint, we took the blue paper off and inserted some daphnia. Our fish shied away form the daphnia and did not eat many of them. The fish that I was watching only ate one Daphnia. The fish actually appeared to be marking its territory at one point. It swum around half of the beaker repetitively. We believe it is a possibility that the fish would have eaten more if we had put a rock or something to shelter them inside their cage because it would provide a more natural and safe feeling habitat.
Hello from Caroline Elementary!! We are super excited to be hosting Brown Trout for the 3rd time! This year our trout are very spunky and have been darting and dashing around the hatch basket. They have just started leaving it and are seeking the depths of the tank.
Bill gave the signal and we released our trout.
Third graders at Belle Sherman Elementary have been studying macro-invertebrate populations (these are stream insects and crustaceans which are visible without magnification) in stream samples. They are getting help from our amazing Cornell Ed. 2400 interns Amanda and Yuhang.
The students have used their knowledge of insects, combined with dichotomous keys to identify a variety of insect larvae- stoneflies, mayflies, caddisflies and more. Using Isaac Walton League stream survey forms, they have also determined that samples from Enfield Creek and Lick Brook indicate very health streams. Either would be good habitat for trout!
nuts! Insects are an incredibly important food- as fly-fishermen know- and our trout recognized them right away. There was one exception however... the trout fry were not in the least interested in HORSEFLY larvae, pictured to the right. Why might that be???
Here's a photo of us in front of our tank. Recently, we have been enjoyed observing a large trout, we named Jaws, terrorize the small fish in the tank. Jaws lurks behind the bubbler and has been seen with a tail coming out of his mouth. He is about 8cm long and looks much different from many other fish in the tank. His color is much lighter than the other fish and he has lighter, smaller spots. The dorsal fin closest to his tail is a bright, orange-red color. We are looking forward to seeing what other trouble Jaws gets into. Hopefully we can capture a picture of him in action. We will certainly post it if we do! Come check out some of our "Trout Tales", some involving Jaws, at the Ithaca Fishing Day on Saturday!
