Weekend Fish Duty Protocols - kkacevas/Laskowski-Lab GitHub Wiki
So it's your turn to take care of our girls? Well, here is a to-do list on what needs to be done every day (including Sat & Sun):
-
Feed the fish-- give them the flake food twice a day and brine shrimp once a day (for brine shrimp protocols, click here 🦐 ). If you are coming in during the weekend, you do NOT need to come in twice each day. You can just feed the girls the flake food one time, and then in ~10 min, feed them again.
- While feeding the girls, please check on the fishes and see if they are swimming weird, have a white bump on their body, etc. If you see any fish with weird behavior or body conformation, please take them out of their tank and put them in a hospital tank.
- Make sure to set up the brine shrimp hatchery after you feed the fish so that it is ready for the next day.
-
Do the daily tasks-- these tasks are listed on the white binder in the fish room and include the following:
- Measure the storage tank pH manually (using the handheld pH probe & a beaker to put the water in). NOTE: make sure to let the water in the storage tank hose run for a few seconds before measuring (into the sump tank of Rack 1).
- Record the conductivity of the storage tank
- Record the temperature of the room (thermostat near the door)
- Check equipment and note if there are any issues (i.e. pH probes not working, etc.). If there are no issues, then put a checkmark ✔️
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Measure the pH in the sump tanks of racks 2, 8, and 9
- WHAT YOU NEED:
- big plastic beaker
- handheld pH probe (found hanging on wall next to sink in fish room)
- Scoop up some water from the sump tank into the beaker
- Turn on the pH probe using the power button
- Once the probe is on, put it in the beaker of water and stir it constantly until you see the blinking symbol on the top of the screen turn into a checkmark
- Record the pH on the white board (as well as the storage tank pH in the next step).
- WHAT YOU NEED:
-
Do water changes for all the hospital tanks-- currently, there are 5 hospital tanks (four on Rack 7 and one on Rack 3). These tanks are marked with two lines: one indicating maximum water level (top line) and the other indicating where you need to drain the water until (bottom line). How to water change:
- WHAT YOU NEED:
- the orange bucket (labelled FOR HOSPITAL TANK ONLY)
- the siphon tube in that orange bucket (FOR HOSPITAL TANK ONLY)
- Fill the bucket with a small amount of tap water (enough water to cover the hose)-- we do this because these fish are sick so we don't want to do mouth siphoning of the water (to prevent ourselves from getting any parasite or sickness the fish may have/pass to us).
- Put the siphon hose in the water (but NOT ALL AT ONCE). When doing this, make sure that you start on one side of the hose and put the one side in the water and slowly continue putting the rest of the hose in the water (while keeping the one side underwater). Make sure that the hose has water in it the whole time.
- Once the hose is completely emerged in the water, put one thumb on one side of the hose to cover the hole and hold your thumb in place. While keeping your thumb on the one side of the hose, put the other thumb on the other side of the hose to cover that hole as well. Now, you can take the hose out of the water (while still covering the holes) and put one side of the hose into the hospital tank. Make sure to point the other hole of the hose towards the bucket BEFORE you uncover your thumb off the hole.
- Once you have 1 hand in the hospital tank water and the other hand that's holding the hose outside of the water pointing the bucket, you can now remove your thumbs from both holes. Water should now be flowing out of the tank. IF NOT, repeat steps above.
- Empty the tank water to the lower line (about 1/5 of the tank). Once you reach that line, remove the hose from the hospital tank water to stop the flow of water from the tank.
- BEFORE dumping the water out, make sure to CHECK if you accidentally sucked up any fish out of their tank. If so, put them back in the tank!
- Take the bucket filled with dirty hospital tank water and dump it down the sink
- Fill the bucket with storage tank water and bring back to hospital tank you just emptied.
- Grab a big beaker to use as a scooper of water and transfer the water from the bucket into the tank. Fill until you reach the maximum line on the tank (top line).
- WHAT YOU NEED: