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Hi!
I am going to be teaching a fish keeping class for 10-13 year olds, about the basics of tropical fish keeping. I was wondering if you had any advice on my plan so far:
Topics covered:
Week 1 – Equipment (Tanks, filters, heaters, thermometers, notebook, test kit, camera(*), ammonia) ^^
Week 2 – Cycling (Nitrogen cycle, keep cycling journal, share stats every week)
Week 3 – Stocking planning (Compatibility, requirements, size, etc)
Week 4 – Plant planning (What plants, lighting, fertilizers, CO2(maybe), etc), and Decoration planning (cleaning/preparing natural décor, DIY slate caves, etc)
Week 5 – Fish diseases (Common fish diseases and how to treat them (Ick, parasites, Fin rot, Columnaris, dropsy), DGD, NTD, other diseases (pop-eye, cloud-eye, fungus, velvet, etc)
Week 6 – Decorating the tanks (Decorate the tanks (hard-scape(rocks and wood)), and plants, bring pictures in to the next week)
Week 7 – Stocking (Add fish! (Might have to spread out over two weeks, depends on the fish the kids want)) ^^
Week 8 – Follow-up/2nd stocking week
(*) means optional, ^^ means that week we'll be going to a pet store.
It's just the very basics, what they need to know to start. The goal is for them each to have their own tank at home that they're working on at home while the class is going on, and then we're going to have a class tank. Everyone will have a 5-20 gallon tank, class tank is going to be 5 gallons. Each week we're going to talk about the topics above, and then work on the class tank so on week 1 I'll start cycling it, and then share the results so far with the kids on week 2. On the second to last day of class when we start stocking our tanks (if they're done being cycled...) I'm going to buy a male Veil tail Betta to go in the class tank. Then the last week we will all share our journals from the week before and discuss what is going on in our tanks.
Any advice is welcome! I'm not sure how much interest I'm going to get, but we'll see.
I am going to be teaching a fish keeping class for 10-13 year olds, about the basics of tropical fish keeping. I was wondering if you had any advice on my plan so far:
Topics covered:
Week 1 – Equipment (Tanks, filters, heaters, thermometers, notebook, test kit, camera(*), ammonia) ^^
Week 2 – Cycling (Nitrogen cycle, keep cycling journal, share stats every week)
Week 3 – Stocking planning (Compatibility, requirements, size, etc)
Week 4 – Plant planning (What plants, lighting, fertilizers, CO2(maybe), etc), and Decoration planning (cleaning/preparing natural décor, DIY slate caves, etc)
Week 5 – Fish diseases (Common fish diseases and how to treat them (Ick, parasites, Fin rot, Columnaris, dropsy), DGD, NTD, other diseases (pop-eye, cloud-eye, fungus, velvet, etc)
Week 6 – Decorating the tanks (Decorate the tanks (hard-scape(rocks and wood)), and plants, bring pictures in to the next week)
Week 7 – Stocking (Add fish! (Might have to spread out over two weeks, depends on the fish the kids want)) ^^
Week 8 – Follow-up/2nd stocking week
(*) means optional, ^^ means that week we'll be going to a pet store.
It's just the very basics, what they need to know to start. The goal is for them each to have their own tank at home that they're working on at home while the class is going on, and then we're going to have a class tank. Everyone will have a 5-20 gallon tank, class tank is going to be 5 gallons. Each week we're going to talk about the topics above, and then work on the class tank so on week 1 I'll start cycling it, and then share the results so far with the kids on week 2. On the second to last day of class when we start stocking our tanks (if they're done being cycled...) I'm going to buy a male Veil tail Betta to go in the class tank. Then the last week we will all share our journals from the week before and discuss what is going on in our tanks.
Any advice is welcome! I'm not sure how much interest I'm going to get, but we'll see.