Feeding time

We feed the salmon 3 times a day. We feed them after specials, after lunch and before 2nd recess. 

When we feed them we give them 2-3 pinches of food. When we drop the food into the tank the salmon go Crazy and dart for the food. 

If you put your hand on top of the tank while we are feeding them they will try to jump up and nip you. ( which means that they are hungry. )

This is the fish food .

Big Boy

Big Boy

           Big boy is HUGE! At the fry stage most salmon are close to 1 and a half inches in length but apparently this big fish hates to blend into the crowd. 
         He's around 2 inches in length and compared to some other fish he's twice the size! He has also tried to devour 2 of his fellow siblings.         
What makes him so big is his dorsal fin. His dorsal fin is 1 centimeter in length and his pelvic and anal fin are both half a centimeter in length. 
        All you have to do to find Big Boy in the tank is to find a huge salmon that has huge fins. ( And every so often is feasting on other fry). Chances of his survival are higher compared to some others because normally the more fit fish survive to the point of release.
But out of total disbelief he died on February 24, 2016.

Freaky Fishy days of February

In February we had some scary times were the nitrite level was very high.
 It got up to 15.0 which is higher than it's been all year. We have lost 60 total Chinook Salmon in these freaky times of February.
 We did not know that the tank was suppose to be filled up to the top causing uneeded nitrite to fill up in the unused space.
For a little while, the nitrite level went down to safe standards but on February 24 2016 it went back up.
We thought that once we filled the tank back up the scary times would diminish. We were wrong!

       The nitrite level climbed the scale once again. It isn't as bad as it was at the start of freaky fishy days of February but 10.0 is still of the charts. 
       The nitrite is suppposed to be below 1.0 but obviously mister nitrite is not cooperating.
For now we'll just hope for the best and try to flow through.

Life cycle

Stage 1: Eggs

Stage 1 of the Chinook Salmon is eggs. The eggs are orange with a black dot in the middle like your eye. When they are laid they spawned in a redd. They usually hatch in the spring. The eggs get fertilized by the male salmon. 

Stage 2: Alevin  

  This next stage is the Alevin. The Alevin salmon are 1 inch long in length. During the next month the Alevin  will remain hidden int he gravel nest and feed from the yolk sack until it is completely absorbed.

Stage 3: Fry

Next up is the Fry. At this stage salmon leave there nests and begin to feed themselves anything they can find but bugs are there favorite. It's about time they begin there journey downstream. The fry must hide under rocks, and among vegetation to avoid predators.

Stage 4: Parr
The Parr is the stage after the Fry. The Parr is now about 1 year old and continues living and eating while starting to migrate up and downstream. They need to eat a lot now because in 3-4 years they will start to depart out to sea in schools and will need a lot of food to survive the trip.

Stage 5: Smolt
Finally the time has come to depart out to sea. The trip is dangerous and will require almost no delays because they only have so much energy in there body. By now they have gotten there spots and now range in length from 65-120 mm.

Stage 6: Adult 
Now mature adults. These Chinook salmon have finished there 1 in a lifetime journey and now are living around 200 miles out in the ocean. While out here they are close to the top of the food chain. Only dessert to killer whales and sharks. They feast on smaller fish amphipods and crustaceans.

Stage 7: Spawning Adult
The spawning adult is the final stage of the life cycle. It is the stage where the salmon return to the same place they were born and lay 700 hundred orangish eggs that have a black eye right in the center. Once the female salmon is done laying her eggs she dies.

Swimming With Salmon

The salmon swimming motion is a lot like a sharks. It uses its tail or the caudal fin to propel itself through the water and uses its pectoral fin to steer. 
The Chinook Salmons top underwater speed is 3.58 m/s but can jump out of the water with a speed of 6.26 m/s.

As a fry, salmon have two different fins where the Anal fin is located but as it goes through the next 2 stages those two fins begin to mash together creating 1 whole fin.
 The Chinook Salmon can change direction really, really fast, which comes in handy when a lot of different animals want them on there dinner plate.
The Salmons color changes a lot as it grows up as well. First of all the start out by looking slightly transparent. But as they grow up they gain some stripes but those stripes eventually fade into dots.
making the one of a kind chinook salmon.

Littlest

Littlest is our one and only deformed Chinook Salmon. We think he was born different from all the other fish in the tank. 

He has a deformed face which makes him look like a duck. He has survived 2 months.

He also still has his egg sack unlike all of the other fish. Littlest looks like he is transparent and he doesn't have his stripes yet.

This is littlest, our deformed fish.
He still has his egg sack.

Fishy fun facts

Fun Facts:
   
 *The female salmon lays her eggs in the exact spawning ground that she was laid in.
     
    *Salmon DO NOT eat while migrating up stream.
     
    *Another name for Chinook salmon is the king salmon.
    
    * A female Chinook salmon can lay up to 7000 eggs.

    *Salmon don't have ears. They hear or feel vibrations along the lateral line of there bodies.