Christian Floyd, a fifth grade White Oak student, spent all of last year taking care of the trout egg project when it was at the intermediate campus. He even spent a weekend sharing his knowledge of the project with fly fishermen, state politicians, Texas Parks and Wildlife biologists, and many others while working the Trout in the Classroom booth at the Guadalupe River Trout Unlimited Trout Fest.  This year he parlayed that knowledge into a winning essay titled, “My Best Day on the River.” The contest, sponsored by the GRTU and Temple Fork Outfitters fly rods, grouped 5th though 8th graders into one category. Christian came out on top winning a fly rod, reel, and case combo worth about $250. He was unable to attend the awards ceremony, but a picture of his father Skyping him in to virtually receive his award is below. Congratulations, Christian. Nice way to extend your learning from the project last year.

Photo Credit: Scott FloydWe just received word that the 200 trout eggs will be available for pickup on Thursday, February 23rd. That means they will begin their life in the tank over the weekend after being warmed up to the temperature of the aquarium water (50º F). The eggs will then be placed into their hatching net for their approximately two weeks left of life as an egg. Generally, it takes about 50 days at 50º to hatch after egg fertilization. The eggs we receive will be at the end of those 50 days due to packaging and shipping times taking up the previous time period.

1600 trout eggs (brothers and sisters to these) will be headed to the Guadalupe River to begin a new life in the wild. They will have a homes in a Whitlock-Vibert boxes for the rest of their egg and fry life spans. We hope to video record this process once the eggs arrive so students can see it. We will discuss the different survival statistics between the hatchery style setting like we have and the natural “wild” setting most eggs end up in. You will be surprised how much of an affect we can have on the life of the trout and other river species through projects like ours.

Keep an eye on this blog and the webcams listed in the Links and Pages section to monitor along with us. We will be posting our daily findings of water quality in the Aquarium Data Observations spreadsheet linked to the right of this blog as well.

Feel free to leave us questions in the comment section for us to answer for you. Comments require approval by the teachers in charge before they show up on the blog, but we will get to them as soon as we can. Thanks so much for being a part of this project with us.