Pay attention to KH! Keep records. Decide what you're doing with temperature. And more!

KH is important!
KH or carbonate hardness can be critical to the overall health of your trout. It's one of the most important compounds to measure, even before you get your eggs. Adequately high KH will be good for your trout's slime coat and will result in more stable pH. In low-KH tanks, pH can vary erratically, which will be very stressful for your fish. Here's an article from Maryland TIC coordinator Chuck Dinkel on the relationship between pH, KH, and GH. Check it out!
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The geological conditions through which your school's water travels--the bedrock under your feet--greatly influence your tank's KH. Many of the schools in my area, the southwestern part of Vermont, sit on lots of limestone and marble. Think Proctor, West Rutland, and Dorset, all famous for their marble quarries. The presence of these calcium-rich rocks in the ground below our schools produces ridiculously high KH. Some of our schools will get KH readings of 250 or higher. Unusual, but not  a problem. But in other parts of the state, extremely hard rocks (with little calcium) can produce water with low KH levels. That's something we need to address.

I've pasted below an image that shows the distribution of various types of bedrock across the state. You can access this image and others at this Agency of Natural Resources Web site http://dec.vermont.gov/geological-survey/publication-gis/VTrock. Ask your students to figure out what kind of rock your school is sitting on.

Soon after you've filled your tank, you should test the water for KH. If it is not at least 150, follow the instructions on page 78 of the Vermont TIC Manual for raising it.

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An atmosphere of anticipation!
Several teachers and even a couple of area parents I've met on the sidewalks of our town or in local stores have told me that students scheduled to get an egg delivery next month are pretty excited. As an indication of this, Bob Wible sent me this photo of a bulletin board put together by Laurie Graham at Bakersfield Middle School.

Record keeping!
Every year we try to use the experiences of Vermont schools to improve our methods and procedures. We can improve our processes only if teachers and their students keep good data. There are two Excel spreadsheets we want you to complete. The first page of one, the "Temp and DI record and swim-up calculator," looks like this.

Read the Instructions.

If you don't see four tabs at the bottom, you should go to the View menu and choose the Enter Full Screen command. You'll need access to Tab B and probably also to Tab C. (We'll discuss that in the next blog post.)

Once you can see the tabs, click on Tab B. "Temp. entry & DI record." Here's what that worksheet looks like.

On the day your eggs arrive, you should enter "Arrival Date" and "Developmental Index (DI) on arrival." Then enter the temperature of your tank in the yellow column (next to the correct date). Keep this chart up by entering temperature for every day, including days when you're not around to read the temperature. For those days, estimate or, worst case, guess! Once all your fish are swimming up, you can stop entering data into this spreadsheet.

​The other Excel spreadsheet, Template for TIC data entry​, looks like this.

You should enter data into this spreadsheet right up until the time you release your fish. As you will see (rightmost column), you should also use this spreadsheet to record observations, for example:

• dead eggs or alevin you needed to remove, 
• the number of fish that seem to be starting to swim up when that happens,
• when fish look unusual or seem to be behaving unusually
• any strange appearance of the water
• etc.

At the end of the TIC season, I will ask you to send me both of these completed spreadsheets. Once I've compiled the submissions from all of our schools, the other coordinators and I will pour over them, looking for patterns, relationships, and insights.  Our discussion of these data will play a large role in the recommendations we make to teachers next year.
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Turkey baster!
If you don't already have one, go out and get a turkey baster. You'll need one in January to remove dead eggs. You don't have to get an expensive one; but, if you buy an inexpensive one, as I did--the one pictured above cost $2.99--make sure the tip is not rough. To the right is a picture of the hole at the tip of the baster I bought. You can see that it's round and smooth.

My friend Chuck Dinkel also provided this extensive list of all the TIC tasks you can perform with your baster:

1. Tempering eggs.  Draw up tank water with baster and add to egg jar water to raise or lower it to tank water temp; 
2. Remove dead eggs AND shells from breeder baskets;
3. When testing water, draw up water from the tank using the baster instead of trying to fill a test tube in the tank. This is bad because students' hands get in the water and any residual chemicals from the test tubes ( if not thoroughly  washed) can get in the tank.  Students can also draw up water using a beaker if you instruct them to do it without getting hands in the water. 
4. Smaller and less aggressive fish that hang out on the bottom of the tank don't grow much because their more aggressive brothers and sisters get the food first.  Fill a beaker 1/2 full with water and add some fish food. Let the food absorb water. Then suck some of the water and the waterlogged food into the baster. Finally, use the baster to inject the water and food down towards the bottom of the tank.

Thanks, Chuck!

Lessons learned
I've compiled below a partial list of lessons we've learned--sometimes the hard way--from our past years of TIC experience. If you remember these and take appropriate precautions, you'll increase your chances of a successful year.

1. Make sure there's almost no chance anybody will unplug your equipment, turn any of it off, or switch off a power strip. (use signs, tape, and face-to-face communication)
2. Treat all water with NovAqua Plus.
3. Cover the filter intake with mesh small enough to prevent alevin from being sucked in but big enough to allow debris to be pulled into the filter.
4. Freeze NovAqua Plus-treated (or dechlorinated) water in several plastic bottles, filling these no more than 75% full. You might need these in the case of a power outage.
5. Wrap your tank with foam (all six sides) and keep the tank covered until your alevin approach the swim-up stage.
   
6. Keep hands out of the water; but, if you do have to put them in, make sure your hands are clean and dry and free of hand sanitizer, hand lotion, perfume, etc.
7. Make sure your custodial staff doesn't use cleaning chemicals in your classroom anywhere close to your tank. Especially discourage the spraying of chemical substances anywhere in your classroom.
8. Tell all your colleagues that no one should be feeding your fish but you and your students.
9. Any other lessons learned??

Tank temperature
Next week I'll publish one more pre-break blog, this one focused on what temperature to keep your tank at prior to the swim-up stage.