The Coral Reef Project At Stratton Elementary School

[revhtree Verified Admin]

How's the project going?

 

[awesomesquad]

How's the project going?

Hey everyone at R2R

My project is going great. With all of work related to my coral reef project and the other teacher things I have to do it's been hard to keep up with posting on my thread but I'll try to hit some of the highlights in the last year.

 

[awesomesquad]

So I left off posting after a very successful exhibit my project created at the spring 2017 engineering open house at the university of illinois. I made a ton of cool contacts at the university and got a lot of good exposure. A week later I have my biggest catastrophe as a reef keeper. After using flatworm exit, I killed all of the fish in one of the reef tanks at my school. I swear I followed all of the directions... siphoned off all of the flat worms, dosed correctly, etc. but all of my fish including some of my favorite tangs stopped swimming and literally died in my hands. Luckly it was over spring break and no kids were around.



Some of them hung around for a day or two but eventually died. It was a really big bummer.




And then after all of that, guess what came back less than a week later...you guessed it; flatworms.

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

So I left off posting after a very successful exhibit my project created at the spring 2017 engineering open house at the university of illinois. I made a ton of cool contacts at the university and got a lot of good exposure. A week later I have my biggest catastrophe as a reef keeper. After using flatworm exit, I killed all of the fish in one of the reef tanks at my school. I swear I followed all of the directions... siphoned off all of the flat worms, dosed correctly, etc. but all of my fish including some of my favorite tangs stopped swimming and literally died in my hands. Luckly it was over spring break and no kids were around.



Some of them hung around for a day or two but eventually died. It was a really big bummer.




And then after all of that, guess what came back less than a week later...you guessed it; flatworms.

LOL, it's been so long I forgot which account to use. And apparently I also forgot how to attach images. I'll study up and then post a bunch of pictures from this last year ...promise!

 

[jsker]

LOL, it's been so long I forgot which account to use. And apparently I also forgot how to attach images. I'll study up and then post a bunch of pictures from this last year ...promise!

I was wondering about that

 

[jsker]

I was wondering about that

Glad to here the project is going strong!!

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

Here's a picture of the aforementioned fish dying and the flat worms that came back days later.

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

The clownfish we hatched summer of 2016 got big enough to sell. My students bagged them up and donated them to our sponsor Quality Marine.

My students moved the fish from our grow out tank.

Clownfish were held temporally in our classroom reef tank as we got ready to ship them.

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

We separated them by size and bagged the fish up.

I think all told we sold 200 fish to Quality Marine and my local pet store, Sailfin Pets.

Here's the fish at their store.

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

Last year I learned how to more efficiently use refugiums.

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And learned that you have to clean them regularly.

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

We move water to the different tanks in our school with a rolling 60 gallon garbage can. One student dropped it dumping about 30 gallons over the hallway. It went into about 8 classrooms and down the stairs. Luckily it happened after school. It took 3 hours to clean it up and then wet move the area with fresh water.

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

Here's some pictures from a school open house.

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

Not really reef related, but about this time last year my students and I got into breeding rabbits. We currently have 6. The two babies in the picture were born in our classroom over christmas break and were just weened this week.

 

[Brandon Rutherford]

Larry from LRS Reef Frenzy continues to help out my project. I can't say enough great things about their food. It's really easy to feed and is off incredible high quality. Thanks Larry!

 

[jsker]

We move water to the different tanks in our school with a rolling 60 gallon garbage can. One student dropped it dumping about 30 gallons over the hallway. It went into about 8 classrooms and down the stairs. Luckily it happened after school. It took 3 hours to clean it up and then wet move the area with fresh water.

Bumer

 

[jsker]

It is so great to see the project continue, congratulation on the bunnies.

 

[DeniseAndy]

Great Stuff. Love the kids helping with the mess. Great lesson in responsibility. Also the bunnies are absolutely adorable. I would have some, but hubby nixed the idea after we had guinea pigs.

 

[Sunny Goold]

Hello Reef 2 Reef

My name is Brandon Rutherford and I've created a coral reef project at Stratton Elementary School in Champaign Illinois where I am a third grade teacher. My project creates and maintains aquariums in classrooms around the school. I work during the school day and after school to teach aquarium keeping to students from a variety of grade levels and try to integrate marine biology and aquarium science into as much of my general curriculum as possible.

My students are avid reef keepers and take our project very seriously. In the following posts I hope to share their story, past and present, and give them a voice in the larger reef community.

<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/123160683" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p><a href="">2015.03.23 - stratton coral reef project</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user38678251">Gregory Pluta</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

Amazing - This is the best thing I have seen all day. This program should be in every school - all the things they learn across all the science disciplines plus responsibility and really great building skills. I wish I had this in school and not what I talk about as the best class from high school (meditation - which has given me much more than I imagined at the time)

 

[Be102]

We need an update!

 

[awesomesquad]

We need an update!

Hi R2R

Thanks for reaching out for an update. I’ve been looping with the same class of student for the last three years and am now teaching fifth grade.

My school has a pretty high turn over for staff and now I’m one of the most senior teachers and have a ton of duties outside of my classroom practice. This said, my project is going strong and we have new tanks and are studying new things.