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Innovative Marine Aquariums

5th Grade Classroom Tank - New plans and questions!


hinnenkm

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Welcome and thanks for looking!

 

Tank equipment:

 

Aquamaxx 9.1 gallon aquarium Nuvo Fusion 20

Stock Pump Sicce 1.5

Spin streams

Nanobox Duo (older and just recently switched it from my home tank to my classroom tank)

Aquaclear 20 filter

Heater (don't remember the brand)

Corallife 250 powerhead (old!) Hydor Koralia 240

 

Fish:

 

Ocellaris clown (locally bred)

Clown goby

Bangaii cardinal pair (1 locally bred, got him/her when it was maybe 15 days old?)

Orange Spot Goby

Baby midas blenny

 

Inverts: 


Tiger pistol shrimp

Tiger sand conch

Anemone crab

Hermit crabs

Short spined sea urchin got too big for the tank, donated to the fish store

4 baby captive bred tuxedo urchins that were donated for the pico contest

Fire shrimp

Peppermint shrimp gave to a friend

Mini conchs 

Trochus snails

Pom pom crab

 

Having a classroom tank been beneficial in so many ways, I'm excited to start sharing that and may have students do some publishing on here as well.

In addition to that, another purpose of this thread is to be able to document an experiment that we are conducting until the end of the school year.

Please feel free to leave any comments or constructive criticism.

Thanks!

  • Like 6
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4 hours ago, Clown79 said:

Looks nice

 

 that is over stocked for a 9g fish wise.

Thanks and the fish are still pretty small right now, but I've got room for them at my house/or new school tank when that needs to happen. 

 

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4 hours ago, Lula_Mae said:

Man, the only classroom pet I ever had in school was a hamster! :lol:

 

4 hours ago, Clown79 said:

We had a crayfish once for a short time.

fancy private schools ;)

 

sounds fun. I wouldn't encourage 5th graders to carouse the interweb. No need to spoil a very nice tank. 

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1 minute ago, 1891Bro said:

 

fancy private schools ;)

 

sounds fun. I wouldn't encourage 5th graders to carouse the interweb. No need to spoil a very nice tank. 

lol yeah I was in public school till high school.

 

She got pregnant at one point and my parents said I could take one of the babies home, but she ate them. :blink:  Great introduction to the circle of life! :o

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1 minute ago, Lula_Mae said:

lol yeah I was in public school till high school.

 

She got pregnant at one point and my parents said I could take one of the babies home, but she ate them. :blink:  Great introduction to the circle of life! :o

 

 

IMG_1618.GIF

  • Like 2
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17 hours ago, 1891Bro said:

 

fancy private schools ;)

 

sounds fun. I wouldn't encourage 5th graders to carouse the interweb. No need to spoil a very nice tank. 

It's a public school in Minneapolis (most of this is either funded by me or grants). I wrote about them doing some publishing on this thread because they need to know how to use technology and appropriately. Also, just to give people a warning that 5th graders are going to be seeing the content on this thread.

It's been a fun project so far though!

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  • 1 month later...

As usual, any updates on my tanks are few and far between, but here it is. The classroom tank is still doing well and not much has changed. 

Speaking to the feeding experiment, the first pic is of the acans that were used. They are beautiful pieces and doing well, but with the limited amount of time left in the school year, we didn't end up seeing results. I am continuing to feed one frozen, one pellets, and one no extra food though to see what kind of long-term effects there will be. 

 

I've also included a few other pics and videos to show what goes on in the tank and the photo of the students wasn't staged :) That is a regular occurrence and one of the many reasons why I love having a tank in the classroom.

 

The last full tank video is the most recent and yes, the glass is dirty, but oh well, I'll go through and clean it today!
 

Beyond that, there are no further plans at the moment except to expand at the start of the school year? I'm looking at an IM Fusion 20 because of the size and the idea of it being an all in one tank. What I would like to do in addition to that is to see if we can get a small frag tank going and start looking at that aspect of reefing. 

 

As always, if there are any ideas, comments, or suggestions you all have, please let me know.


Thanks!

  • Like 3
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RayWhisperer

What did you end up going with as the "theme" for this tank?  Or, since you mentioned conducting an experiment, and feeding acans, was it growth rates with feeding vs. without? Just curious, as I never did see a final decision.

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1 minute ago, RayWhisperer said:

What did you end up going with as the "theme" for this tank?  Or, since you mentioned conducting an experiment, and feeding acans, was it growth rates with feeding vs. without? Just curious, as I never did see a final decision.

Thanks for the comment! The tank doesn't really have a 'theme' because of the combination of everything in there, but with the acans though the intent is to see which source of food/energy produces the most growth. The frags were all 3 polyps cut from the same colony and as I mentioned in the post above, one has been being fed with frozen food (mysis), one with LPS pellets, and one no food (just energy from photosynthesis). I'm really curious to see results, but they've been very slow. We did work on learning all about the corals, caring for them, maintaining the tank, and doing regular water testing and changes as we started the experiment. I'm looking to continue it next year (which is really in a couple months) as well as see what else we can accomplish.

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ChristopherDido

Following along, starting a tank in my middle School classroom this year. Gonna be about 10 gallon so it can sit on my desk. Plan is to start a club that will do everything and learn as they go. Good luck to you!

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  • 3 weeks later...
This week and next I've got a little more time on my hands than usual, so I get to spend a little more time on tank related projects!
There is a program through work that allows us to gain points through exercise and then redeem them.... I have been slowly saving up and was able to dramatically lower the price of a Nuvo Fusion 20 and it arrived this week! I just transferred everything yesterday and the fish have been loving the added room. They are still relatively small, but I knew it was time for them to have a new home and this tank is absolutely beautiful. This tank, however, is going to be the final size upgrade (because be myself I wouldn't be able to move anything bigger in order to take it home for the summers).
I didn't transfer any of the substrate because I didn't want to have to deal with any issues that may have come up because of it, but I will be adding some when this gets brought back to my classroom.
Also, for as much as I love this tank, it's got some issues that I've shown in this update. The green hair algae is steadily decreasing due to increased water changes and the help of my conch and urchin. There is also some bryopsis (I believe) and my plan is to get a lettuce sea slug now that I've got the all-in-one system.... we'll see how it goes.
As always, thanks for looking and any constructive comments are welcome!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Like 3
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On July 9, 2017 at 1:55 PM, ChristopherDido said:

Following along, starting a tank in my middle School classroom this year. Gonna be about 10 gallon so it can sit on my desk. Plan is to start a club that will do everything and learn as they go. Good luck to you!

Sorry I hadn't seen this for some reason! I'd love to see how your tank progresses :) There really are a lot of benefits to having this in the classroom and middle-school is a great age for it too!! Have fun :)

On July 9, 2017 at 7:32 PM, GregEmmitte said:

Dig the sun corals

Thanks so much - it's been a really cool coral to have and it's exciting to see how it's thrived over time!

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16 minutes ago, Lula_Mae said:

I feel ya on the tank moving.  I just moved my little 5.5 and I am totally wiped out lol. 

It's always a process, regardless of the size. Smaller tanks are a little more convenient though when you have to move them!

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16 minutes ago, hinnenkm said:

It's always a process, regardless of the size. Smaller tanks are a little more convenient though when you have to move them!

Ain't that the truth! :lol:

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1 hour ago, yungKitten said:

Are you gonna change your insta handle?

Probably, just haven't gotten around to it. I only use that account to be able to upload to here though.... my other account is the one I use more frequently, but it's said to private and with that I can't share to this site.

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