Second Internship Experience!

On Monday Dec. 23, I went back to the Houston Museum of Natrual Science for my second time attending my internship. When I arrived, work started right away. Christine Batten and I wanted to clean as many rocks as we could. We wanted to get rid of all of the flatworms, aiptasias, and junk plants that we could. To do this we set up a station outside of the tank. We had one rinse bucket and one bucket with two gallons of water and three drops of Flatworm RX. We then took one rock from the tank and dipped it in the bucket of Flatworm RX. This would kill all of the flatworms on the surface of the rock. We then had to go in with toothbrushes and scrub the rock until all the other flatworms, aphasias, and junk plants were gone. We then rinsed the rocks with salt water so that no harmful chemicals would go in the water. Each rock took about twenty minutes to complete. We worked on two rocks together and then Christine started cleaning the tank. I finished cleaning another rock while she cleaned the part of the tank where we were putting the rocks back in. We put all. The clean rocks back in the tank and then it was time to go. Overall, this internship has helped me learn so much more about marine life and how to maintain saltwater fishe tanks. It has also taught me more about how to care for animals. 

First Internship!

I was so excited to go to the HMNS for my internship. I was helping clean out an aquarium after it got infested by parasites. There were nematodes, aiptasias, and other parasites. Aiptasias are an infectious  type of sea anemone. They are extremly hard to get rid of because if any part of them is left, they will grow back. Our plan is to clean out of all the rocks and fish. We plan to do this by putting the rocks and fish into a quarantine tank. After the rocks and fish are clean of parasites, we will put them back into the original tank. On Monday, we were planning to build the quarantine tank so that we would have it ready to put fish in. However, we could not find any sponge filters which are neccasary to build a quarantine tank. Since we could not build the quarantine tank, we decided to test the water in the tank with all the parasites. We measured the phosphate level of the tank and many others different things that could affect the health of the fish and plants in the tank. Unfortunately, after taking measures of the tank, it was time to go back to POHS.