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.