First Live Food Experiment!

Our young trout have grown to a size of about 2 or 3 centimeters.  Are they ready to hunt and eat living prey?  At this point in the year, classes are ready to conduct their first "live food" feeding experiments, using a common zooplankton, called "Daphnia".  

First, students have a chance to practice observation skills, as they get to know the "costar" of this experiment.  Daphnia are about the size of a sesame seed. 

Then, student research teams prepare their hypotheses and perform an experiment to see how their trout will respond to an opportunity to try a new food... that just might try to escape!  Usually, our staff is on hand to lead this experiment (we love it!) but we'll be assisting virtually this year!  Here's a quick glimpse into how it goes...

Finally, students evaluate their results and compare with other research teams.  Here is a typical chart that depicts how many daphnia are eaten by trout during 20 second intervals over five minutes.

Interesting...  for more on this lesson and teaching materials, click on the "For Teachers" tab!

Create a Poster and Get Famous!

Here's a cool project for MIDDLE SCHOOL students!  New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation has announced their 2021 "Protect Our Watersheds" Poster Contest.

Top 14 entries will be published in the NY DEC's 2022 Calendar, sent all over the state. One student per poster.  Deadline for receipt of posters is Friday, February 5, 2021.  See the Details HERE.  

And, to sweeten the pot, we're select one or two entries and create banners to fly from the MV Teal this summer on Cayuga Lake!  

(link:  https://www.dec.ny.gov/education/32108.html)

Everything Cycles: From Circuits to Fish Food!

Your friendly "Trout in the Classroom" crew is working with the teachers & students at Northeast Elementary school to figure out how to reduce high ammonia levels in their aquarium.  Ammonia is toxic to fish, so we need to fix this.  Usually a couple of water changes solves everything, but this time the problem is unusually persistant.  

To figure out why the ammonia problem is persisting, we need to do a little detective work.  So this is a great opportunity to consider the important role of nitrogen in our food web and in our aquariums.  We know that fish waste is has a very high nitrogen content, in the form of ammonia (a compound that includes one nitrogren atom and 4 hydrogen atoms, NH4) , so we know how the ammonia got into the water.  But a healthy aquarium (or stream) should have very little ammonia, so where does it go, and what's gone wrong?  And... how can we explain this to the students in charge of the tank?  

The answer hit me like an electric shock when I saw this on the whiteboard in Ms. Werner's classroom.

Of course!  When any components of a circuit is missing or broken, and electrons can't complete the full cycle, the circuit doesn't work!  That's just like Nitrogen in our aquariums.  We add nitrogen to our aquariums in the form of FISH FOOD.  Our trout eat and create waste that we observe as ammonia (NH4).  Bacteria change the ammonia to nitrite (NO2) and nitrate (NO3).  All the while, nitrogen is moving through the NITROGEN CYCLE!  

In Northeast's trout aquarium, the nitrogen cycle isn't working quite right!  While we're investigating, you can check out our new lesson plan and slide show on Circuits and the Nitrogen Cycle.   (Click on the "for Teachers" tab, above, for complete info!)

Maybe you can think of a few more cycles you've observed, or create a poster of the Water Cycle for the NY DEC "We all Live in a Watershed" Poster Contest (see prior post)!  

Spears of Ice Rising Out of the Ground!

I was recently hiking the Fischer Old Growth preserve, along Cayuga Inlet south of Ithaca and came across many examples of "Needle Ice".  If you spend any time outdoors in damp areas, you've probably seen it, too.  But how does this happen???  Well, here is an explanation from a very cool blog, called "Naturally Curious".  Check in out!  ~Bill F.

Most of us have seen “needle ice” but are unsure of how it is formed. James Carter, former professor of geology and geography at Illinois State University, describes its formation in the following way.  “On cold nights at the beginning of winter, when temperatures just barely sink below freezing, the ground will stay slightly warmer than the air above. That means that any water in the ground… will remain liquid. In certain soils, though, water that’s in the ground gets sucked upward rather than sinking down. This is a result of capillary action: the adhesion of water molecules to the walls of a very narrow tube will cause the liquid to be drawn upward despite the pull of gravity.“

Certain soil contains particular kinds of pebbles that contain pores just wide enough to allow capillary action to occur. Water in the ground is drawn upward through the pores until it hits the air. Then it freezes. As more water is drawn up, it freezes as it hits the air and pushes the newly formed needle of ice outward, resulting in the curls of ice growing out of the ground at this time of year.

Naturally Curious is supported by donations. If you choose to contribute, you may go to http://www.naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.com  and click on the yellow “donate” button.

Groton Elementary Trout Cam

Introducing the Groton 4th Grade "Think Tank" fully of brown trout fry, cared for by Dick Brecht's classes.  (Click to open the video, or click here for the most up to date stream)

We look forward to helping all of our participating classrooms take their trout online in the coming weeks!  Stay tuned....

Hatching Brook Trout Eggs!

 

Here's a peek into virtual learning at Dryden Elementary.  Brook trout eggs are just hatching, and there is so much for students to observe.  Movement of the curled up embyoes withing the egg; changes in the eyes; differences in hatched alevins.  Thanks to Leo Guelpa for sharing!

Up-Close Alevin Video

Brown Trout were delivered in late October to 9 schools, in addition to dem tanks at the Sciencenter and Tompkin Center for HIstory and Culture.  

Here's a great video from Mrs. McCheyne's South Seneca 5th grade classroom.  This is what our brown trout alevins look like, up close, today.  They are roughly 2 cm in length.  The Yolk Sack that provides their initial energy supply is nearly gone and they have begun to swim upright.  Every day, students are able to observe these beautiful creatures are growing and changing .  

Trout in the Classroom 2020 is GO!

We are excited to announce that nearly all of our Eastern Finger Lakes network of schools will be participating during the 2020 to 2021 school year, COVID or not!  Discover Cayuga Lake's staff, with help from our friends at Trout Unlimited, will supporting classroom aquaria and providing both virtual and live programming throughout the winter for 16 schools.  We will also have demo tanks at Ithaca's Sciencenter and at the Tompkins Center for History & Culture.  

Classroom Cold Water Aquariums like this one are rceiving trout eggs at:

Dryden Elementary & High School

Groton Elementary & High School

Ithaca's Caroline, Enfield, Fall Creek, Northeast & South Hill Elementaries

Lansing Elementary

Newfield Middle School

South Seneca Elementary

Trumansburg Middle School

TST BOCES Smith School

End of the 2020 TiC Program

Hi everyone!

Thank you for sticking with us through the difficulties surrounding the COVID situation and moving all our programming online. It was a sad day that we had to release all the trout early, BUT if you want to be involved in a live trout release (socially distantly of course) and actually get to release a trout... the Sciencenter will be releasing their trout from our program on July 11th 10-12, just outside where Cascadilla Creek runs by their building.

The event will be a little bit like a fair, so just drop by with your family and check out what we have planned! There will be some macroinvertebrate sampling happening, Bill and I will be there to answer any questions, and we might even have the DEC/Fish & Wildlife there doing fish shocking!

We've been cleaning the tanks up and getting ready for next year... hopefully the fall will be different and we'll all be back in schools. Here's the tank at Northeast Elementary sitting outside for cleaning:

If you want to stay up to date on our programming for the summer, check out our brand new Floating Classroom Blog, where we'll be posting all our activities this summer. 

Stay safe, stay healthy, and we'll see you all soon!

ISAW: Zebra Mussels!

Have you ever cut yourself on something sharp on or near a dock on the lake? It was probably a zebra mussel.

Larval zebra mussel

Zebra mussels are named for their zebra-like stripes and were brought to the U.S. from the region between Eastern Europe and Western Asia, carried in ship ballast water (what ships use to control how much they float). These mussels have spread throughout Cayuga Lake and can be found along docks, in sediment at the bottom of the lake, and even floating in the water. Zebra mussels float in their larval stage, but are microscopic, requiring a microscope to see them.

Students looking at zebra
mussels in sediment on our boat.

Discover Cayuga Lake looks at zebra mussels with classes, both in the early fall when they appear in our plankton samples and throughout the year with sediment samples collected from the lake bottom. 

It is nearly impossible to control the spread of these mussels, once they are carried into a body of water, their tiny larvae can travel easily between other bodies of water. There is some speculation, however, that zebra mussels may not be that harmful to lake ecosystems. This is false! While zebra mussels do increase lake clarity and make lakes seem cleaner, that is only because they are filter feeders and are eating the plankton community. This is a negative impact because the plankton community uses the sunlight, so otherwise the sunlight penetrates deeper in the lake and can cause algae that prefer deeper water to grow more.