SHARKS! and Adding to Their Tanks

On Wednesday, November 5, I went to the HMNS to visit Christine Batten, my mentor. I had to be there at 9:00, and Ian had to be to another internship at 8:30, so I decided to just go over with him. At nine, I met Christine inside the Sharks! exhibit because she helps run it. We then went downstairs to the Animal Alcove, a room on the Lower Level that houses lots of animals. She wanted to put some new rocks in the Sharks! exhibit to give them more places to rest. In the Animal Alcove, we picked up some supplies that we would need for the day: water, some plastic bags, and rocks. We went back up to the Sharks! exhibit and piled rocks in the tank in three different locations. We went back to the Animal Alcove to pick up some crabs, which I would be putting in the shark tanks. Before I put the crabs in the shark tank, they had to acclimate to the temperature of the tank, so they didn't die of shock. To acclimate them, I first put them in a plastic bag filled with the water they were used to. I floated the bags in the shark tanks for fifteen minutes. During these fifteen minutes, Christine and I went to check on an existing, empty tank that she and I are planning on putting creatures in. We discussed different things that could go in this tank, and we felt like nudibranchs would be best for this tank. I am currently writing a proposal to get nudibranchs and other supplies for this tank. After checking on this tank, we traveled back down to the shark tank, and I took the crabs out of the floating bags and placed them around the shark tank.

        The Texas Ecology exhibit opened up about a week before I visited, and she offered to show me it. Of course I said yes! It was incredible. It was clear that lots of effort had been put into making this exhibit look as real as possible. Each tree in the exhibit had trunks that were living. Christine said that the artists creating the exhibit got living trees and pulled each leaf of individually. She said they then attached fake, but realistic, leaves to where the real leaves were. There was also living Spanish moss hanging from branches that were coming out of the ceiling and walls. There were three animatronic animals, a skunk, a woodpecker, and a rattlesnake. I would defiantly recommend going to the HMNS to see this exhibit as it is just stunning.

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.