Surprising Results from Water Tests!!

     On Wednesday, the 22, I visited the HMNS to work on my tank. Christine was really busy, since she had to teach a lot of classes, so I worked alone. I started off taking water tests of both the tanks, the quarantine and the clownfish tank. 

     These are the results from the tests of the quarantine tank. The top one, the purple one, is for the pH of the test. It is purple, which indicates an pH of 7.8. Under that is the ammonia test, which is bright yellow. This indicates a ammonia level of 0ppm, which is great because ammonia can cause fish disease as well as other bad things. Under the ammonia tube is the test for nitrate. It is dark orange, which is really bad. It means that the nitrate levels are between 20-40ppm. It should be yellow and 0ppm. When the nitrate levels are too high it causes fish disease, coral disease, and algae growth. These are all bad things for the tank, which is why we are planning on doing a partial water change to try to lower the nitrate levels. Under that is the test for nitrite, it is right where we want it to be, at 0ppm. This means that the biological filter of the tank is working well.

     I then took water test of the clownfish tank. The pH levels were around 8.4, which is still good for the tank; however, we are going to try to bring down that gap between the two pH's. The ammonia levels in the clownfish tank was 0ppm, which is great. The nitrate levels in the clownfish tank were 5ppm, which is slightly too high. However, this is most likely caused by just setting up the tank. Usually when you put new water into a tank, there is a slight spike in nitrate levels. However, we expect the levels to go down as the water gets adjusted to the tank. More importantly, the nitrate levels of the tank were 2.0ppm. This is not very good because it can cause fish disease. The high levels of nitrite are most likely caused by the lack of a biological filter in the tank. This is why I believe that we should add a few clean rocks to the tank to start up the biological filter, so that it is ready as soon as we want to put the fish back in it. 

     As one can see, the chemical levels in the tank differ significantly, which is why I am taking multiple measures to change the levels of each tank, so there see where they should be. I am planning on  doing partial water changes and adding just a couple of rocks to the clownfish tank so that the chemical levels balance out. 

     After taking water tests, I washed the clean rocks that have been taken out of the clownfish tank. I then set them out to air-dry, so that all the parasites on them die. Soon I will start to add the sand, rocks and fish back to the clownfish tank, and it will be back to normal.

    My notes from this last internship visit.

The Tank is almost clean

Today, October 7, 2014, I went to my internship at the HMNS. I was only there for one and a half hours but it was enough for Christine and I to get lots of stuff done. First, we went to the Sharks! exhibit, which she runs. While there we checked the tanks to make sure they were all running correctly. They have to types of sharks in the exhibit, bamboo sharks and walking sharks. The walking sharks are really funny because when they swim, they look as if they are walking on their fins. After making sure everything was running smoothly in Sharks! We went to the clownfish tank, which was full of water, and began siphoning out the sand and the water. We about 99% of the sand out of the tank, so our next step is to get that last one-percent out by draining the tank and scooping it out manually. After we siphoned as much sand as we could, we began scrubbing the sides of the tank with steelwool-like pads and acrylic blades to clean all the algae and crystalline coral off of the sides. I then left, but I look forward to coming back and finally finishing cleaning the tank.

Internship Fun!

On Octpber 4, I went to the HMNS to visit the Hall of Malacology for my internship. Over the summer, I had been slowly taking out rocks and cleaning them and putting them into the quarantine tank until only half of the rocks were left. Christine, my mentor, and I, today, decided that we were going to do a massive push on the tank. We pulled all the rocks out and put them in a separate bucket. We didn't clean the rocks today, but we plan to do it next week. 

This is what the tank looked like after taking out all the rocks. It was pretty dirty. 

We then began siphoning the water and sand from the tank.

This is what the tank looked like after siphoning it for a few minutes. As you can see, we removed a lot of the sand from this side. The bucket we were siphoning the water into filled up, so we had to take it down to the loading dock and dump it out.

We took more water and sand out of the tank until the water level was really low. We then filled the tank back up with filtered fresh water, so that we could continue to siphon water and more sand out of the tank. It is easier to siphon water and sand out of the tank than scoop it out, which is why we continued to add more water so that we could keep siphoning. We did this process of filling up the tank and then siphoning out water and sand about four times, until the majority of the sand was out. Over the next few weeks, we plan to scrub the tank down and run fresh water through it to make sure it is fully clean. We will then add the rocks and the fish back into the tank until it is back to normal.

Eleventh Internship Blog

On Friday, May 11, I visited the HMNS for my internship. I tested the water in the quarantine tank to see if it matched up with the water that was in the tank upstairs. Even though we put the same water in the tanks, sometimes, one will find different chemicals in them because the rocks release chemicals naturally. Fortunately, both the tank's chemicals matched up. Because of this, we can start treating the quarantine tank with aphasia killer. One can see a giant aphasia on the picture of the rock below. It is the big clearish, white looking thing on the top of the rock. We don't like treating aphasias in a tank with other things because the chemical that treats the aphasia can kill the fish or other animals in that tank. However, in the quarantine tank, nothing that can be killed by the chemical should be living. 

Tenth Internship Experience

On Friday April 25, I went to the HMNS for my internship. This was one of my favorite times going because I got so much done. I took water tests of the quarantine tank, which we built two weeks ago. I also took water tests of the upstairs tank that we are cleaning. I tested the water for pH, salinity, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. The tests for both tanks matched up, which is good because that means that we can start putting rocks from the upstairs tank into the quarantine tank. After I took water tests, I cleaned two rocks from the upstairs tank, and then brought one of them downstairs. We will put this rock into the quarantine tank, next week, after we have time to do a few more water tests on the quarantine tank.

Ninth Internship Experience

On March 21, I visited the HMNS for my internship. I learned a lot this time because we built the quarantine tank. We built this tank so that we could have a place to put the clean rocks. It also is to help get rid of all of parasites in the tank because we can put chemicals into the quarantine tank that we can't out in the normal tank. The quarantine tank is much more simple than the normal tank because it just has a pump and filter. The normal tank has many more parts to it which is why we can't put many chemicals in it(they could ruin these parts). After building the quarantine tank, we cleaned another tank which contained a lungfish. This tank was covered in algae because it had not been cleaned in a very long time. The staff don't clean the tank that often because the lungfish can survive in many different conditions. It is very adaptable which is why it can survive in many different conditions. 

I then took water tests of the tank that is full of parasites and the quarantine tank. I tested their ammonia levels, carbon hardenss, nitrite levels, ph, and salinity levels. The ammonia levels in the quarantine tank were much higher than the other tank. This is because when you first put water in a new tank this ammonia levels spike. All of the of conditions of the water were the same. Since the ammonia levels will go back down in about a week, next time I go to my internship, we are planning on putting some rocks in the quarantine tank.

We then went on to do a water change on the touch tank that is upstairs. We pumped out about half of the water in the tank into a big bin. We then put in water that had been mixed to match the conditions of the water already in the tank. We let the water circulate a few times, and then it was time for me to go. Overall, I learned a lot this internship time because we did so much. 

Eighth internship blog

On Thursday, the 20, I visited the HMNS for my internship. I got the keys from the front desk and went down the hall to the animal alcove. I got the cart with all of the materials on it from the animal alcove and went upstairs to the fish tank. I pulled out one rock andbegan cleaning it.this rock took me about 30 minutes to clean because there was so much stuff on it. Once I was done cleaning this rock, I put it back in the tank and pulled out a new rock. This rock had even more stuff on it, so I had to spend about 40 minutes getting all of the stuff off of it. Once this rock was done, I got a small rock from the tank. I cleaned this Rockford about 10 minutes because there was not that much stuff on it. I then took out three rocks thati had cleaned the previous week and recleaned them. Each one of these rock took me about 10 minutes to clean, since not much grows back on the rocks in a week. I then put all of the rocks back in the tank and went down to the animal alcove to put my cart away. 

This Is what the tank looks like now.

This is what the tank used to look like.

Seventh Internship Experience.

Last Thursday, I visited the HMNS for my internship. Christine, my mentor, was not available to help me so I had to clean the tank by myself. This was fun because it gave me a chance to really test out how much I knew about the tank. I started cleaning two rocks that I had previously cleaned, just to make sure nothing else was in them. After I cleaned these two rocks, it started on a small rock that I had never cleaned before. This rock was covered with plant junk, which took me a really long time to get off. I moved on to another rock, which was slightly bigger. This rock didn't have a ton of plant junk on it, but it did have a bristle worms. I had to pick each bristle worm out of each crevice. By the end, I had picked about 5 bristle worms out of this rock. I move onto my last rock. This rock had a lot of long plant junk on it. This plant junk was easier to get off since it was long, so I could just pull it off with my hands. It was then time for me to go, so I quickly cleaned up and went back to school. 

Sixth Internship Experience!

On Tuesday the 21, I visited the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences for my sixth internship experience. Christine was busy doing work so I had to clean the tank by myself. I re-cleaned some of the rocks that I had preciously cleaned and found a few more aiptasias. I then started to clean another rock. This rock was fairly big and took me about twenty minutes to clean. I then cleaned another rock. This one had a ton of plant junk on it. Because of this, the rock took me about thirty minutes. By the end about half of the tank's rocks had been cleaned. I then cleaned up my station and went back to school.

Fifth Internship Experience!

On Monday, the 13th, I visited the Houston Museum of Natrual Sciences to work at my internship. Christine Batten, my mentor, was not there to help me because she was sick. This meant that I had to work alone. This turned out to be a good thing because it let me test my knowledge of the tank and equipment. I gathered the equipment and went upstairs to work on the tank. I then quickly re-cleaned some rocks that I had previously cleaned. This didn't take long so I had time to do other rocks. I pt those rocks back in the tank and then I took out another rock. I cleaned that rock of all of the aiptasias, plant junk, and flatworms. This took me about thirty minutes since there was so much plant junk. This plant junk was very hard to get off because it was so stuck. At the end of this rock,it was nearly time for me to leave. I then quickly cleaned off the tank and put my equipment away. I then had to go back to POHS.

Fourth Internship Experience

On Monday, January 6, I visited the HMNS again for my internship. This was the first time that I worked independently because Christine, my mentor, had to do some more work. She helped me gather materials and take the top off of the tank. She then went to go do her work and I started to clean rocks. I re-cleaned some of the rocks that I had previously cleaned. I did this just to make sure that all of the flatworms and other junk was off of them. I then moved on to cleaning a new rock. This rock was pretty big so it took me a longer time to clean. I cleaned off most of the junk in the first ten minutes because a lot of the junk on the rock were plants. The plants were pretty long so I could just pluck them off. After most of the big junk was cleaned off, I had to start cleaning the smaller junk on the rock. This took a really long time since I could just pull this small junk off of the rock, I had to scrub it really hard with a toothbrush. After finishing this rock, I placed it back into the tank. As I was doing this Christine had just arrived to help me clean up. We cleaned the surrounding area of water and then took all our materials back down to where they belonged. I felt like I learned a ton this time at my internship because I had to put my skills to the test, since I didn't have the option to ask Christine how to do this or that.

Thrid Internship Experience!

On Monday Dec. 30th, I visited the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences to go to my internship. When I was at my internship, I cleaned the fish tank that had been infested with flatworms and other junk plants. This was a pretty hard task because we had to scrub all of the rocks with toothbrushes to make sure that all the flatworms and other junk was gone. We set up a little station with two buckets and a few paper towels. One of the buckets contain a toxic chemical meant to kill all of the flatworms. The other bucket with a rinse bucket that contained just normal tapwater. I pulled one rock out of the tank and dumped it in the bucket with the toxic chemicals and began scrubbing it with a toothbrush. To clean just this one rock took me about 20 minutes, since it had so many holes and I had to get all of the junk out of those holes. After scrubbing all the junk off, I rinsed it in that bucket with tapwater and put it back in the tank. I moved onto another rock in the tank. This happened to be the biggest rock in the tank, and I could barely fit it in the toxic chemical bucket. This rock took me about 35 minutes to clean because it was so big. After I cleaned it off I rinsed with water and put it back in the tank. As I was cleaning the rocks in the tank, Christine Batten, my mentor, was siphoning some of the flatworms out of the tank. After cleaning off these two rocks, we quickly scrubbed some junk off of the three rocks that we had cleaned the previous week. We then put all the materials away. After doing all this it was, unfortunately, time for me to leave.  I am very excited to go back to my internship because I feel that it will continue to teach me new things about marine life and how to take care of saltwater tanks.