Hi everyone, welcome back to Curious by Nature.
My name is Marjorie.
Here at the Museum, we take care of a lot of animals,
from butterflies to turtles to frogs to fish.
Today, we're going to feed some of the fish that live here at the Museum.
Let's get started.
Hi everyone, so now we're down here and we're getting ready to feed our fish.
I'm going to keep my mask on because we're near our animals,
and we're going to start off with feeding our good water habitat.
So these fish live in a habitat that's representative of non-polluted water.
So non-polluted clear water, it's going to support a lot of different types of life,
a lot of different types of fish that are going to eat a lot of different types of things.
We actually have six different types of food we're going to be feeding them
and while we're feeding them we're going to be feeding some fish,
they like to eat on the bottom and some fish like to eat on the top,
and some fish like to eat different things.
So first, we're going to feed our fish some daphnia,
which are basically teeny, tiny crustaceans.
So we're feeding the fish along the bottom first,
and now I'm going to sprinkle some of that same food along the top,
to make sure that fish that like to eat along the top are getting some of that food too.
There's a lot of diversity in here so they're going to eat a lot of different things.
So now we're going to feed some brine shrimp.
So again I'm going to put some food along the bottom
for the fish who like to eat on the bottom.
and then I'm going to sprinkle some of that food along the top, too,
for the fish that like to eat on the surface of the water as opposed to the bottom.
Now we're going to feed some mysis shrimp,
so again we're going to feed some fish at the bottom.
Get into all the little hiding places the fish might like to hide.
And then we're going to feed some of the fish that like to be on top.
So this is the fourth type of food they have,
these are called blood worms.
You can see they're tiny red worms.
So we're feeding these along the bottom and then we're going to be feeding these along the top, too.
Now we're going to feed some algae chips.
Here's some algae chips here,
so these are just chips made out of algae, so made out of plants,
for the fish that like to eat plants.
And what they are probably really going to be excited about
is now we're actually going to feed some bugs.
We have some superworms and we have some meal worms in here,
so you might have seen us feed some other animals these.
So these are superworms and mealworms and because they're wriggling and moving,
these fish usually like to eat these bugs.
So in a healthy ecosystem with a lot of different species of plants and animals,
they're going to eat in a lot of different ways,
and so that way they aren't competing with each other,
and it can support more diversity of life.
And that's actually one of the ways that ecologists and biologists can tell
if a river or lake has a healthy ecosystem, is if it has a lot of different types
of fish and a lot of different types of plants.
Scientists will actually go out to a river or lake and catch fish,
and the number of types of fish that they catch will actually tell them if there's a healthy ecosystem or not.
So if there's not a whole lot of different types of fish, then it's probably not super healthy.
But if they can find a lot of different types of fish in a river or a lake,
that means it's a much healthier ecosystem.
So in this habitat right now we have a few different types of fish.
We have some dace, those are the ones with the lines on them,
and then we have a couple types of minnows, as well.
The dace, they're called redbelly dace.
The males will actually turn bright red on the bottom when they're trying to attract females,
so every once in a while when you come see these fish,
there'll be a few that are bright red and those are going to be the male fish.
And sometimes you can see darters in here.
Those fish are pretty cool, they live along the bottom,
and I think it looks like they walk sometimes.
So in here you'll see as well as a lot of different types of fish,
you'll see a lot of different types of plants, too.
Having a lot of different types of plants, so diversity of plants,
that also shows us that there's a healthy ecosystem here.
And so you'll also see some rocks and logs, and that makes good habitats for fish to hide in.
So you'll see we have some small fish in here and some bigger fish in here,
so a lot of times the smaller fish will feel safer if they have somewhere to hide from the bigger fish.
It just helps them feel a little safer.
These are some of the fish you'd find in our local waterways.
They only live in healthy river ecosystems, so low pollution,
it has to have high in oxygen, and it has to have places with plants and rocks and places for them to hide.
So nothing that has been dredged.
These fish are very picky about where they'll live.
And that's our fish feeding for today.
That's our show for today.
Thank you so much for joining us.
I hope you enjoyed learning about how we take care of the fish here at the Museum.
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We'll see you here next time on Curious By Nature.