Help me give my students a cleanup crew of snails for their reef tanks.
FULLY FUNDED! Ms. Horne's classroom raised $176
This project is fully funded
My Project
A remarkable variety of nuisance algae can grow in reef tanks. Algae on rocks and corals blocks light, irritates tissue, and inhibits growth. Instead of using chemicals, my students will add an assortment of marine snails from Florida that target various types of algae, bacteria, and detritus in our classroom coral reef and propagation tanks.
The vendor for this project, Reef Cleaners, specializes in just what we need for our boxes of ocean: cleanup crews!
Now and during the summer break our tanks need a variety of snails to keep algae, bacteria, and detritus on our rocks and sandbed at bay. During the school year, these issues are partially due to overfeeding and student hands in the tanks during maintenance. During summer break, our systems will not receive daily care, fresh food, or live plankton, but mostly automated feeding of dry food and infrequent cleaning. This inevitably leads to increased algae growth. In accordance with responsible animal husbandry, at this time we will not add fish or creatures desired for interesting behaviors, but just important maintenance workers to keep systems stable. This time around we will add a snail-only crew. We already have various species of crabs, and last summer they preferred eating some of their snail co-workers over dry food.
The elbow grease provided by cleanup crews is natural, efficient, and more economical than chemical treatments. These invertebrates will keep our coral stock healthy and growing so next school year we can divide and share them with other schools and trade with local hobbyists to keep parts of original coral colonies in multiple tanks. This increases the chances of long-term coral survival, protects our investment in livestock, allows students to acquire new specimens without having to purchase them, and reduces unnecessary collection from wild reefs.
Half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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