Fish Suicide

As I was walking to the side of the house to take my weekly readings I noticed that one of my fish was on the ground.  Dead.  Unbelievable.  I have a cover over the tank for a few reasons and that is one of them.  The opening between the cover and the tank is so small.  I don't understand how that he got out.  Friendly Aquaponics state in their manual that this can happen.  Tilapia explore and will jump out if there is no cover.  I took this opportunity to replace the material I used on my cover.

Other than that mishap everything with the tank and trough are doing very well.  The water is ready for plants.  The ammonia reading is low, the nitrite is dropping, and the nitrate is high.  This is our plant food.  I will explain more about the progress of the plants in the next post.

Last note:  Our fish death will not be wasted.  The fish sacrificed himself for education.  Let me explain.

I had stated that one of the goals of this project was to provide schools with a working aquaponics system that is a project based, hands-on approach to learning.  The aquaponics project involves all of the core disciplines and other elective curricula.  Disciplines include;

SCIENCE

• Physics (Engineering) ---- trough and tank design
• Chemistry - water
• Biology (zoology (ichthyology, entomology, botany, horticulture, aquaculture, microbiology,...)) -- fish, plants, bacteria

MATH

• Geometry - trough and tank design
• Algebra - trough and tank design

 LANGUAGE ARTS

• English --- research, writing technical reports, design instructions

SOCIAL SCIENCE

• History --- History of aquaculture, traditional farming methods, hydroponics, etc...
• Social Projects --- Food and Rescue Mission

Now back to the fish that will be used for education....  My daughter, son, and I will be dissecting an examining everything we need to know about tilapia anatomy just as would be the case at any school.  We will be looking at everything; eyes, scales, digestive tract, sexual organs, fins, heart, etc.  Our fish is in the freezer waiting for our dissecting scope to be brought out and utilized.  I asked my daughter a question today.  How do I know if the fish is a male or female?  She looked at me inquisitively and responded how most kids do, "I don't know daddy tell me."  What an opportunity for me!  Do you think I told her the answer? 

No.

I am training my daughter to be a critical thinker.  She has to find the answer.  Once she knew I was not going to tell her I then began asking leading questions to help guide her towards the answer.  She wonderfully commented on how her and her brothers private parts were different and therefore maybe the female fish and male fish have different private parts.

So the journey begins....  How fortunate I am to be able to guide her on her educational quest which ultimately reveals more and more about how wonderful God is.

I believe education can be looked at two ways;

1. To know more about a particular subject ... or 
2. To know more about a particular subject which reveals more about who God is and what He did for us.

I choose the latter......