The Awesome Squad Question and Answer Thread

[brandoniscool]

[/QUOTE]
Hi my name is Soren and I was wondering why do they call it a chocolate chip star fish . What do the brown things on the star fish do.Dose it give the star fish camouflage.Or does it look like something spiky like a sea orchard so they do not want attack the star fish.
BY!

[clay12340]

Originally Posted by brandoniscool

Hi I'm Ashton and I was wondering what this thing does and how it lives?


Click on the link to see.


http://www.incredibleaquarium.com/im...aper_6u62r.jpg

Thanks!!

That is commonly called a chocolate chip starfish. They live by crawling around the sea floor and eating just about anything meaty that they're able to catch. They are pretty common in aquariums, but are not reef safe. They will eat other things in the tank that you want to keep.

One interesting thing about starfish is that if they lose a leg they are capable of regrowing them later.

[brandoniscool]

Originally Posted by ReeferKimberly

Hi Ashton My favorite coral is the Duncan coral. I like fan corals like you do too! I want to get one. Back to my favorite: I went to a fish store when I was first starting out with my new tank and was just buying some rocks like you guys got donated. I found a little rock that had some slime on the end and I knew that was weird for a rock so I thought I should stand it up and see if anything grew from it. Eventually little tiny duncan heads grew! It is still my favorite coral today.

This is what it looked like when I got it.



And this was about a year later.



My favorite part of the hobby is the liverock because you can find so much life on it that you didn't even know was there!

Your class is very cool. When I was in third grade my teacher took us to the local salmon hatchery and got some baby salmon for us to raise. When they were big enough we let them go in a local reserve. I thought that was pretty cool but I think your reef tanks are even cooler!

Hi my name is Jenna, and I love your picture and I saw a little hole/mouth thingy and I was wondering what it is? I am almost sure it is a mouth but not sure. and also if you could tell me what kind of coral it is that would be even better. thanks!!!!!!



-Jenna

[brandoniscool]

Hey Everyone ,

Virginia here from Brandon Rutherford's 3rd grade class . We are setting up a tank in another third grade class . Today me and about 5 other friends , My teacher and 3 AWESOME tutors stayed after school today and worked on that class room tank . We got some sea fans and today we were fragging them and putting them in the new tank . We were using really sharp tweezers that could cut through a fish or cut your finger off (The thing I am trying to say is that they are really dangerous and that I was scared of using them at first !!!!!!!!!) First , I was cutting off the dead parts with the tweezers . Then , I was kneading the putty and then sticking the live sea fans onto a smooth part on a rock . Then , we put them in a bucket with water in it . After it the sea fans had been in the bucket for 5-15 minutes we put them in the new tank . It was so awesome to do all of this work and then see them in the new tank !!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was so cool to see to see it in the tank !!!!!!!!!!!!! REEF ROCKS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Best ,

Virginia

[brandoniscool]

Hello

i'm Gaby and we set up a new tank in Mrs Perez's class.And today
after school we cleaned the tank we scraped the tank and planting corals
and placing them in the tank and then we made 3 syphons and when we did all of the syphons, all three of us got some in our mouth! It tasted icky! So we had to wash it out! After that, we fragged and some people had to take the putty and place the newly cut pieces of frag on the rock. It was really cool to cut and place the new pieces! But it also was long cause you had to hold them there still forever! This was a really great experience! i love helping the tank, and the other class. it is a great thing to do. I hope I do this again after school with my BFF'S!!!!!!!!!!!!!


THE END



-GABY

[brandoniscool]

hi my name is Emily.I went to Mrs.Perez's class.( we put a tank in her classroom to).We cleaned the tank,we brought some corals from our tank and we planted them in live rock with gray putty.We also cut off the dead parts of the coral before I planted it.I also started doing water change.My friend Gaby accidentally drank some of the saltwater from our tank.. it was fun

[liverock]

Originally Posted by brandoniscool

Hey Everyone ,

Virginia here from Brandon Rutherford's 3rd grade class . We are setting up a tank in another third grade class . Today me and about 5 other friends , My teacher and 3 AWESOME tutors stayed after school today and worked on that class room tank . We got some sea fans and today we were fragging them and putting them in the new tank . We were using really sharp tweezers that could cut through a fish or cut your finger off (The thing I am trying to say is that they are really dangerous and that I was scared of using them at first !!!!!!!!!) First , I was cutting off the dead parts with the tweezers . Then , I was kneading the putty and then sticking the live sea fans onto a smooth part on a rock . Then , we put them in a bucket with water in it . After it the sea fans had been in the bucket for 5-15 minutes we put them in the new tank . It was so awesome to do all of this work and then see them in the new tank !!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was so cool to see to see it in the tank !!!!!!!!!!!!! REEF ROCKS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Best ,

Virginia

Hello Emily Gaby and Virgina!

Congratulations on the new tank and now being official coral propagators!

Great job on making baby sea fans!

Tel Mr Rutherford he can also cut small pieces of the candelabra gorgonian..and make babies from it also...it is the one with the basket star hanging on it.

I get to dive all the time in the Gulf in the saltwater, and I know what you mean by yucky as I get to taste a lot of saltwater when diving under water!

Richard TBS
www.tbsaltwater.com

[brandoniscool]

Hey RC, Brandon here.

We had quite a busy day. Mrs. Perez and I created some time for some of my kiddos to come over and teach her students about their new tank by first showing them some dry base rock I just cleaned. We had a big discussion about its purpose and looking closely at the fine pores in the rock.

[brandoniscool]

Brandon here again. LiveRock donated a huge hermit crab that's been in our QT tank. The crab's been nicknamed chopper and has become infamous in third grade. Kids from neighboring classrooms come in and give him shrimp on feeding probes, jumping back each time it grabs for food.

When it came time to move him to the new tank, no one wanted to pick it up to transport it (I didn't tell them they could use a net). There was an awkward silence with several students volunteering, then backing down. Finally Julio rolled up his sleeves, picked it up and became the instant hero of the day. Word on the playground spread and everyone was giving him high fives. He was all smiles all day long.

[Halo_003]

Originally Posted by brandoniscool

Hello. My name is Lyons. My question today is about what kind of creatures live in the very bottom of the sea where there is no light. I am asking this because if there ever was a shipwreck we can be prepared. I also am asking this question because then scientist can learn the deep and find out what lives down there. Then we can also can make submarine so that the submarine doesn't get crush.

My favorite thing in my aquarium is how cool the fish moves though the water. And how the fish gets fed. And hides. And swim.



Thank you
and
sincerely,Lyons

Hi Lyons, good question. There are lots of deep sea creatures that live with no light, like the angler fish:



The Giant Squid:
This is hard to find real pictures of, most are dead when they're found, but this video is really cool. It's from the first time a giant squid was ever seen on video. http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/cu...iant-squid.htm

The Frill Shark:


The Giant Spider Crab: (This one is 5 feet wide!! They can reach up to 12 feet though.)


The Pacific Viperfish: (If you look at it's belly, you can see it glows, that's how they lure their prey, just like some of the angler fish I showed you above.)


I'm not experienced enough yet to tell you about all the kinds of coral that are Non-PhotoSynthetic(NPS), I just got my aquarium set up a couple months ago. But you can look at other deep sea animals here: http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/...sea-creatures/

And also! There is a submarine like you mentioned. James Cameron used it to dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. (Nearly 36,000 feet deep!!) There should be a movie on it sometime this year, you can read all about the Challenger Deep mission here: http://deepseachallenge.com/

[brandoniscool]

Brandon here again. We also introduced the first fish to our new tank. A pair of black ocellaris clownfish donated by me, from my tank at home.

[brandoniscool]

Originally Posted by liverock

Hello Emily Gaby and Virgina!

Congratulations on the new tank and now being official coral propagators!

Great job on making baby sea fans!

Tel Mr Rutherford he can also cut small pieces of the candelabra gorgonian..and make babies from it also...it is the one with the basket star hanging on it.

I get to dive all the time in the Gulf in the saltwater, and I know what you mean by yucky as I get to taste a lot of saltwater when diving under water!

Richard TBS
www.tbsaltwater.com

Brandon once again. Thought I'd share some pictures of some of the girls cutting and mounting the gorgonians.


We got to spend a lot of time looking at the sea fans and talking about how they feed.



Lizabeth and her little brother helped me trim off some of the damaged branches and stick them on rocks with putty.




Lucy and Arie came over to help as well.


Cutting through some of the stems was pretty hard for 9 year olds, even with the excellent bone shears Ecotech gave us.



We were pretty pleased with ourselves by the end of the day.

[brandoniscool]

Brandon here again. I had a great day with the kiddos and but was pretty tired after spending 12+ hours at school and looking forward to going home. Did a final check on the tank only to find that someone knocked the auto-topoff hose out of place and it was continually dumping water on the floor behind the tank. Took 45 minutes to clean up!

[brandoniscool]

Brandon here once again. Here's some more questions from Mrs. Perez's class. They have very limited background knowledge and benefit from detailed explanations with simple language and pictures. Thanks to all on RC who answer their questions. The question bowl has exploded, I only picked the one's handy. More will come!

[brandoniscool]

Originally Posted by brandoniscool

Brandon here once again. Here's some more questions from Mrs. Perez's class. They have very limited background knowledge and benefit from detailed explanations with simple language and pictures. Thanks to all on RC who answer their questions. The question bowl has exploded, I only picked the one's handy. More will come!

[brandoniscool]

Originally Posted by brandoniscool

Brandon here once again. Here's some more questions from Mrs. Perez's class. They have very limited background knowledge and benefit from detailed explanations with simple language and pictures. Thanks to all on RC who answer their questions. The question bowl has exploded, I only picked the one's handy. More will come!

Jurtizy is referring to the orange tree sponge

[brandoniscool]

Originally Posted by brandoniscool

Brandon here once again. Here's some more questions from Mrs. Perez's class. They have very limited background knowledge and benefit from detailed explanations with simple language and pictures. Thanks to all on RC who answer their questions. The question bowl has exploded, I only picked the one's handy. More will come!

[brandoniscool]

Originally Posted by brandoniscool

Brandon here once again. Here's some more questions from Mrs. Perez's class. They have very limited background knowledge and benefit from detailed explanations with simple language and pictures. Thanks to all on RC who answer their questions. The question bowl has exploded, I only picked the one's handy. More will come!

At the end of the cycle, lots of hair algae started to grow. Many of the kids thought it was another type of coral or a moving animal.

[brandoniscool]

Originally Posted by brandoniscool

Brandon here once again. Here's some more questions from Mrs. Perez's class. They have very limited background knowledge and benefit from detailed explanations with simple language and pictures. Thanks to all on RC who answer their questions. The question bowl has exploded, I only picked the one's handy. More will come!

[brandoniscool]

Wanted to end my marathon posting spree with a shout out to a generous donor. Larry at LRS Reef Frenzy foods went out of his way to supply us with some very high quality foods and some cool swag that the kids can play with.

The food is very clean and has consistent particle size. His help didn't stop there, he's been networking for us and has helped solicit some other very generous donations. Larry is a great guy, plus he has his own theme song.

[dkeller_nc]

Originally Posted by brandoniscool

Hi Daniela - Yes, hopefully the coral you're talking about will grow back. Almost all corals in a reef aquarium can be broken and the pieces re-attached with glue to a piece of rock. The pieces eventually grow into a new colony, and reef keepers refer to doing this as "fragging" (short for fragmenting).

Many corals in the wild reproduce this way besides making eggs. A storm comes through the reef, and the waves break pieces off the large coral colonies. If these pieces settle in a good spot on the reef with good current and sunshine, they will grow into new colonies.

[dkeller_nc]

Originally Posted by brandoniscool

Hi Jaqueline - Starfish move by shuffling many tiny feet on the underside of their arms. Depending on what kind of starfish it is and how big they are, they may have hundreds or even thousands of these tiny feet.

Here is a video of a starfish moving around by moving its feet on the underside of its arms:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPhAGyDceLo

Sometimes these feet are called "tube feet" - can you guess why?

[Paul B]

Jaqueline carbs walk slow because of their shell. We people are a lot more flexible than a crab and our arms and legs can move all different ways but a crab is inside a shell and most of their joints only move in one direction so they can't move very fast.

[dkeller_nc]

Originally Posted by brandoniscool

Hello

i'm Gaby and we set up a new tank in Mrs Perez's class.And today
after school we cleaned the tank we scraped the tank and planting corals
and placing them in the tank and then we made 3 syphons and when we did all of the syphons, all three of us got some in our mouth! It tasted icky!
-GABY

Hi Gaby - Did you know that you can start a siphon without having to suck on the end of the tube? All you have to do is put most of the tube into the tank that you're going to take water out of and let it fill up with water. Then put your thumb over the end of the tube that you're going to put in the bucket while it's still in the tank, then pull this end of the hose out and put it into the bucket.

As long as the tube is mostly filled with water, and your thumb completely seals the end that's going into the bucket so that air can't get back in, a siphon will start automatically when you take your thumb off.

If it's hard to understand how to do this from reading words, get Mr. Rutherford to show you and your classmates how. It will make your lunch taste much better!

[johnike]

Originally Posted by Paul B

Jaqueline carbs walk slow because of their shell. We people are a lot more flexible than a crab and our arms and legs can move all different ways but a crab is inside a shell and most of their joints only move in one direction so they can't move very fast.

Paul is correct, and have you ever tried to find good gym shoes in crab size?



Great job, everyone.