This week we have read a book about salmon called Idaho Chinook Salmon Journey of a Life Cycle. 

We saw parr marks, and they swim fast. They also hide behind the sun shelter.

We want the community to know about our tank teams! Our water quality team feeds the fish, checks the water quality and uploads the results on the website. The website team, this team puts stuff like the weekly updates on the website. Our creative midea crew makes updates and puts them on the billboard. Last, is our growth tracking team. They check the fish's length and things like that. Those are our fish tank teams.

Growth Team Update📏: This week the salmon are swimming up, and down. Our growth data sheet shows that all is well with our salmon. Our salmon are the same size as they were last week.  

By Trinity, 

Over Spring Break and this week we lost 5 more fish. Because the PH (potential hydrogen) is too high, we lost 5 more fish. We started with 50 fish  but now we only have 31. We are trying to find out a way to stop the pH from going to high or low.

The data team told us that,"This week not much has happened. We have had no deaths and they are the same size 4 cm. The fish are in the par stage. Fun fact: we are releasing our fish on our camping trip which is on the 27 of may.¨ 

water quality

This week the water quality was not great. The ammonia was high so it was a bit concerning, but not too high for the fish. 

The data scientists told us, "This week our salmon are the same size and are doing well. They are eating well and jumping like they should be at their age. Not much has happened with them. We will be releasing them in 2 weeks and 3 days."

These past 2 weeks our water quality was better. Our nitrates and nitrites are both 0ppm which is good. The pH was 7.6 for low and 7.8 for high which is perfect for the fish. Luckily our ammonia was 0.25 which is slightly high but not too concerning. We also did not lose any more fish! We hope our water quality will remain good.

This week the salmon have been normal, and they have been swimming everywhere. There is now only 12 days left until we release the salmon. This week the fish are the same size as last week which was 4 centimeters, or you could say 40 millimeters. We have learned that we have been feeding them food that is too small for them, so they are not growing.  Also, this week there were no fish that died. This week we also talked to the day care about the salmon, because they are getting a fish.

This is our final week of Tank Teams. 😢 We are releasing our fish next week at Hammer Creek Recreation site on the Salmon River. We have had the salmon for 23 weeks! During that time we tested water quality, and had to add pH down a couple times because the pH was too high for the fish. There was a period of poor water quality that resulted in some deaths, so we had to make sure to change the water and do our jobs well. We also spent time brainstorming what could be the issue. Was it our filter or something else?? We had lot's of adventures with these fish, such as scary power outages. This is important because without power their chiller, bubbler, and filter will turn off! We learned a lot during the process. We learned about the Nimiipuu, an indigenous tribe that live in our area. The Nimiipuu are connected to salmon and the Salmon River. We also learned how to correctly monitor water quality.  Salmon are fun to learn about, and this project proves that no matter how old or young you are, YOU can care for wild salmon. Mic Drop 🫳🎤

One last thing, we received many grants that helped make this possible. Thank you to the Rural Grants in Place Group, The Maki Foundation, and the Lightfoot Foundation! 🙏