Blog 14

I, Felicia Stears, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.
My mentor Andres Carillo and the staff members Chris Bautista, Kiersten Darrow and Nicole Nakata all helped me complete my extra hours. They taught me how to clea tanks, how to prep food for fish, how to set up tanks and lots more.

This component helped me understand the foundation of my project in many ways. For starters, I learned how to set up my own tank. I had to first figure out how big of a tank I'd need, this I needed help from the staff and so we went back to the 'tank shed' and they helped me pick them out. Then I needed to wash them off, scrub and clean them. Next I had to go through the bleaching process where I filled the tanks up with water, poured bleach in them, let them sit, drain them, fill them up again, add some more chemicals and then drain them. Then I had to wash them out again. After this I had to measure the height and width of the tank so that I could figure out how big I needed to cut my dividers. I used plastic mesh as my dividers. Then I hot glued them in the tank. After this I moved them onto a water table. Then I had to set it up. I started by cutting lengths of tubing to make water and air lines. Then I attached airstones to 9 of them. Then I attached them and made covers for my tanks. Then I was able to fill them up with AQ2 (cold) water and put my Olive Rockfish in. This whole project with my Olive Rockfish has been really helpful because I've learned how to sort of take care of my own fish/exhibit. 

Part of my larger tank for my Olive Rockfish (before plants were added)

My failure at gluing the mesh in neatly

Olive Rockfish 8 when he was going through pigmentation changes

Red Abalone

Draining my Rockfish tanks to low levels to take pictures for Image J

Added Plants and shelter for them.

Segmented Worm under the microscope

lobster eggs I got to collect, this was really cool to do