all the salmon will die...

in a bout of ambitious summer planning, i contacted someone about having a tank in my classroom for raising salmon. i was warned, "it takes a lot of work". but my ambitious, summer (vacationing) self said, "no problem".

and then in december i attended a workshop on how to set up my tank and everything i should know. the woman leading it told us wide-eyed teachers that if tap water gets into the tank, all the salmon will die. if the temperature rises above 10 degrees, all teh salmon will die. if the ammonia levels get too high, all the salmon will die. if they get too much light, all the salmon will die. i commented to the person next to me, "i'm starting to get nervous about this..." and the leader overheard and said to me, " you SHOULD be nervous. it's an accident waiting to happen. and if you kill them all, the students will call you salmon killer." shoot...

so for the past couple weeks, i've been preparing the students for the salmon's fragility. "they could all die." "no, really. they might all die. and that would be okay." nonetheless, the kids are unbelieveably excited about our salmon...though they keep mentioning eating them.

i told the janitor that i was getting salmon eggs and he laughed. "do you remember the two ferns you used to have in here?" (i killed them.)

despite my poor reputation, the eggs arrived yesterday. 80 chum salmon. due to hatch in approximately 8 days. our water won't stay cold enough so we have to keep changing frozen pop bottles of ice in and out of the tank all day. last night, i put 3 frozen bottles in and this morning, the temperature of the tank was at 12 degrees. we've now gotten it back down to 10.

but so far, all the salmon are not dead.