Baby sturgeon and more at TNACI (By Ashley-Rose L.)

Hey Everyone! Ashley-Rose here to tell you about the River Fellow’s first trip to the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute (TNACI). Kathlina Alford greeted us when we got there, and told us basically what we were going to be doing that day. First, we got to feed the baby lake sturgeon. Some lake sturgeon can get as big as six and a half feet, but these little babies were tiny, the smallest around one and a half inches and the biggest between three and four inches. We feed them with blood worms, which are the small, long, thin, bright red larvae of the midge fly. This larva is critical in the wild aquatic food chain due to its red iron-porphyrin protein, which is the cause for its distinctive color. It’s very commonly used in freshwater aquariums, and is the perfect snack for lake sturgeon. 

Feeding blood worms to sturgeon 

Removing the dead sturgeon from the tank 

Since lake sturgeon find their food not by sight but by their other senses, you feed them by gradually distributing the juice from the blood worms through a pipette, instead of just dumping a whole container of blood worms in one spot.

            After feeding the sturgeon we got to the fun part- frozen krill smashing. Krill is also used to feed the fish there, and comes packaged in thick sheets; It’s like frozen shrimp meatloaf on steroids. Our job was to break it into smaller chunks using a hammer and chisel, and then repackage it into gallon size plastic bags. Who knew you could use a hammer to make sushi?

            Sadly, our krill smashing fun came to an end and we had to scrub and clean the brook trout tanks. This was all fun and dandy, except for the fact that brook trout usually live in mountain streams, and therefore, very cold water. The water temperature was about 47 degrees, which may not sound that cold, but the River Fellows felt like we were putting our hands in Arctic water. Just for fun, we decided to have a competition to see who could keep a hand in the tank the longest, which ended in us calling it a tie and all taking our hands out at the same time. 

After we finished cleaning the tanks and regained some sort of feeling in our icy cold hands, it was time for us to leave our friends at TNACI.

Thanks for reading,

-Ashley-Rose

P.S.

We also helped to load up the truck for the scientists that would be doing field work in the afternoon and cleaned some of the filters for the sturgeon tanks.

Trying on the backpack electroshocker before it is loaded on the truck 

Cleaning sturgeon tank filters