Small Tank At School

[katykaye]

Whilst I was at my childrens school yesterday I noticed that their small hexagonal fish tank was missing the one big goldfish they had in it. I can only assume the poor thing has died!

They don't seem to be very good at looking after it so I was going to suggest that I take on the task of sorting it out (glutton for punishment!!)

it has a light and a filter and is approx 20L.

I am fairly confident I can get it to look nice for them (and will maintain it myself) but was wondering if there are any coldwater fish apart from goldfish that I can put in it?

 

[ox5477]

"One big Goldfish?" Im to assume that there is more fish in the tank? 20L is only roughly 5g which is way too small for anything except a lone beta. What is the current stocking? and is there any possibility that they would splurge $20.00 for an upgrade to atleast a 15 or 20G tank? (60 to 80L)

 

[WILDER]

To be honest I don't agree with fish tanks in schools as the staff don't set a very good example to there pupils by letting fish suffer in dreadful conditions.

Also what do you do in the holdiays when the school closed.

 

[ox5477]

To be honest I don't agree with fish tanks in schools as the staff don't set a very good example to there pupils by letting fish suffer in dreadful conditions.

Also what do you do in the holdiays when the school closed.

I would agree Wilder, but there are some special cases where the people do care about the fish and will actually take their own personal time make sure the fish stay healthy and happy. But, for every one special case such as this, there are another 100 that the fish never see a water change in their life and get fed 90 times a day by each child until they die from waste in the water and overeating.

 

[waterdrop]

To be honest I don't agree with fish tanks in schools as the staff don't set a very good example to there pupils by letting fish suffer in dreadful conditions.

Also what do you do in the holdiays when the school closed.

That Holiday thing happened to -me- years ago. In my Junior High Biology classroom we had several beautiful tanks. They were partially built-in with built-in plumbing and everything. The niceest was about a 75G tank with a mature community population, large Angels and all. I think the teacher was good about caring for them (using the thinking of the hobby back then) and for a time I must have been her primary helper.

For some reason when summer holiday came she had no in-school care or place for the fish to go, something had changed from previous years I guess. I was the only hope for these fish since I had some tanks and had a 29G available (sounds sad now, doesn't it!)

I took them home and must have tried my best but back in those days, temperature matching was about the only thing anyone told me to worry about. There was certainly no such thing as common knowledge about cycling. The filters were small. I thought I was advanced because I replaced the plain fluourescent with a Gro-Lux red/blue light but of course there must have been way less than one watt per gallon, no co2, no added nutrients, so only the most hardy plants would live. At least the big angels and some of the others did well but I'm sure a lot of the fish were lost.

Funny, but virtually none of the Angelfish I see now, even large ones, seem anywhere near as pretty as those back in the late 1960's. They had very dark bold black vertical stripes against bright shimmering silver and often beautiful orange or red in the eyes and beautiful fins with trailing lines at the tips. Maybe I'm just very unlucky in what I see now but all the recent ones I've seen look nowhere near this healthy. (Sorry for rambling!)

Anyway, KatyKaye, I think its great what you are thinking of doing. Could be a nice learning opportunity for some of the students and you could do it with an eye toward the number you could successfully take in at the end of term, or that maybe a budding young hobbiest could take in at home.

~~waterdrop~~