TUYOUTH
Basic classroom systems consist of some of the components you’d expect to see in a home aquarium: a standard tank (usually 55 gallons or more), a water filter, and sometimes gravel and other ornamentation. What makes the TIC systems very unique is the addition of a chiller, which is needed to keep the tank’s temperature at a relatively stable 50°F. Since most chillers for aquarium use are designed to chill the water to around 60°F, TIC chillers must be outsized (for instance, a chiller designed for a normal 100 gallon tank will keep the desired 50°F in a 55-gallon Trout in the Classroom tank). At over $500, the chiller is also the most expensive component. Once a TIC system has been delivered to a school and set up, the classroom teacher responsible for the care and maintenance of the system and its fish starts the work of setting up the tank and conditioning the water to receive fish. This critical step ensures that all treatment chemicals have been removed and that the water has reached the appropriate temperature to host the trout eggs, which will eventually become fingerlings that are released into one of our area streams. Some schools will retain aquarium gravel from previous years’ systems to help jumpstart the development of the natural biofilter, which begins during this “setup” period. The biofilter is made up of bacteria that live in the rocks at the bottom of a tank and works with the filtration system to rid the water of harmful ammonia,
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Spring 2019
nitrates and nitrites. The gravel must be kept the bacteria to survive.
Many schools also construct thermal “insulat keep the water cold and dark. Some of these affairs, with an elaborate system of peepholes and adorned with original student artwork — “STP” stickers that festooned many of the th years ago.
A delivery day is scheduled by one of our two hatcheries, depending on school location. T meet at the hatchery carrying plastic containe stocked with ice. This keeps the water and eg insulation (newspaper or a thin towel) must the ice to keep the water and the eggs from ge transport. Usually, a single volunteer will del on a route established by the chapter’s TIC c
A curious volunteer can learn a lot on their fi room in the hatchery. For instance, did you k trout eggs do not come from North Carolina do keep “brood stock” and produce brook tr eggs, but not rainbow eggs. This generally ha commercial availability of rainbow trout eggs to obtain. But right now, all of our state’s sto