Tilapia

The Sharks are hoping to become the proud parents of many baby tilapia. Scientifically impossible, you say? No, not for our Sharks. This week we went to visit Mr. Kaneko's high-school aquaponics class to learn about aquaponics and decide if we wanted to help. We learned that the class is growing vegetables using the waste from the tanks of baby tilapia. We got to see the tubs where the fish live, the pumps that carry the fish water to the plants, and the growing vegetables. We learned that they can only use small fish in their tanks so they will need a supply of baby tilapia. That's where we come in. We will keep a mom and a dad fish, who will hopefully have babies that we can give to the aquaponics class.
Before we made a decision, we discussed what we would need supply-wise and information-wise to make this happen. After we came up with our long list of questions we would have to answer and our list of supplies we would need to get, we still unanimously voted to breed tilapia. So, we wrote a letter to Mrs. Hussey asking for permission to do this and a letter to all the parents asking if anyone has a 55-gallon tank that they don't want anymore. (We got a tank today without having to send out the letter!)  We also started to do research to find out what kind of food we need, how tilapia actually have babies, what we need to do to protect the babies, what kind of water quality we need, and more. We're very excited! Here are the links to the aquaponics classes if you want to take a look.
mpiap1.blogspot.com
aquaponicsperiod4.blogspot.com

Check out our gallery for pictures from our visit to the high school and our vocabulary presentation at assembly!

Posted on September 18, 2008 4:22 PM | Permalink