• Home
  • About TIC
  • TIC blog
  • TIC resources
    • TIC manuals
    • Equipment set-up videos
    • Managing swim-up and DI >
      • Breeder basket improvement and management
      • Predicting swim-up
  • TIC slideshows
  • Trout videos
  • Release Day videos
  • TIC in the media
  • Contact us
  • 2015-2016 TIC blog
  • 2016-2017 TIC blog
Vermont TIC

tic streamings

Order those eggs! Installing foam to insulate your tank. Who's doing TIC?

11/27/2016

1 Comment

 
Order your eggs now!
Recently Tom Jones, of Vermont Fish and Wildlife, sent out a list of schools that have requested eggs. I forwarded that list as an e-mail attachment to all Vermont TIC participants on November 27. If you weren't on the list, please order your eggs ASAP using the application available in this Google Docs folder
Detailed instructions on installing foam
Through the wizardry of Bob Wible, it's possible to insulate a 55-gallon tank with a single 4' X 8' sheet of foam board. You can find Bob's instructions here.

Bob buys 1 3/8"Tuff-R poly insulation at Home Depot.  It has foil on both sides.  He also purchases (at Ace hardware) a 50-yard roll of 1.88" wide foil for each tank installation. 

Picture
Bob alongside his well-designed tank insulation system.
Some set-up advice from our most senior salmonid raiser
Trip Westcott raised salmon at the Lothrop School in Pittsfield, Vermont, for over a quarter century, making him (as far as I know) the most experienced TIC/SIC teacher in the state. After Trip retired in June 2015, he donated his very well-used equipment to our Vermont TIC program. (It's now back in use in Danielle Levine's classroom at The Schoolhouse Learning Center in Burlington.)

Here are a few of Trip's set-up suggestions.

  1. You need a low table for the tank and space under or beside it for the chiller. [Some teachers who lacked a sufficiently sturdy table or counter used stacks of cement blocks covered by an appropriate length of plywood.]
  2. Get tank clean and empty. Use only cold pure tap water. Paper towel OK. Use NO chemicals to clean {NOT Ever]!! Not even the school anti-germ soap that is in every school.
  3. Keep those new buckets pristine.
  4. Do not use old sponges for anything near the tank. They are full of anti-germ stuff that can wipe out your fish in a very short time.
  5. Cover the tank top with plastic or paper  so no cleaning agents and yeasts float in.
  6. Test your tank platform for strength.  (Danielle Fagen had 500 pounds of kids sit on it.)
  7. Find an electrical outlet that the janitor does not use.  
  8. The bottom piece of insulation board goes on first under the tank. 
  9. Have some dark brown paper to put directly under the glass bottom. It will help later activities.
  10. No water yet; but after we do add water, we'll test the tank for a few days.
Current list of TIC schools and teachers
A few schools that decided late in the season to try to join the TIC program found that they would not be able to pull it off this year. Even so, we have 66 Vermont schools participating in the 2016-2017 TIC program. Thanks to a grant from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation, South Royalton School has two tanks, one high school tank and one in middle school, so that brings our tank total to 67. This is 30 more than we had last year!

In addition, because many schools have two or more teachers collaborating on the TIC program, this year 93 Vermont teachers are doing TIC.

You can find the latest list here.
1 Comment
Kathy Ehlers
12/5/2016 10:16:37 am

Thank you Bob Wible for the insulation cutting instructions. It sure made things go along much quicker!

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Joe Mark, Lead Facilitator, Vermont Trout in the Classroom​

    ​In June 2012, I retired after 40 years in higher education, having spent the last 32 years of my career as dean at Castleton. One of the first things I volunteered to do in retirement was to work with Jim Mirenda to help the Dorset School, where his kids and my Vermont grandkids attend, start a TIC program. Gradually that commitment grew into my current role, which is both demanding and highly rewarding.

    Archives

    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About TIC
  • TIC blog
  • TIC resources
    • TIC manuals
    • Equipment set-up videos
    • Managing swim-up and DI >
      • Breeder basket improvement and management
      • Predicting swim-up
  • TIC slideshows
  • Trout videos
  • Release Day videos
  • TIC in the media
  • Contact us
  • 2015-2016 TIC blog
  • 2016-2017 TIC blog