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.