Fish Release!

Today, we released 28 brown trout!!! We brought our fish to Sprout Creek, a Class A fishery, so that they can grow to size and be a source of safe food for local fishermen! This was a bit rushed, since we had planned to keep them longer. However, they grew to have tremendous environmental needs that we could not provide for in our system. As the temperatures in New York began to rise, the water in our system retained less water. So, we released them. Two days ago, we tested the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH, and dissolved oxygen content of Sprout Creek. Everything matched up extremely well. The best part was that the DO was 7.6 ppm in Sprout Creek, but only 6.4 ppm in ours! This is a major reason why we released them. We are so glad that we were able to release these fish into their new home and that they will be a great addition to our community. The reason why our work is so important is because we are directly giving back to our community. Over a seven-week period, the AquaPals quantified the growth of their 32 brown trout. We performed weigh-ins to quantify the growth that our fish experienced and to demonstrate that our fish provide a safe alternative to PCB contaminated fish found in the Hudson. We obtained our fish embryos from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in October 2017 and they have been PCB-free since day one. We released 28 brown trout into Sprout Creek in hopes of providing an alternative food resource to the PCB-contaminated fish in the Hudson. The combined mass of the fish was 286.16 grams after being in our system for 87 days.