For the last eight years, a group of students at Tumbler Ridge Secondary have been learning about science, art and design, business management and other skills in a highly non-traditional way.
By raising fish.
Indeed, the class is not organized as a typical class, with the teacher teaching students. Instead, it is organized as a company, with different students fulfilling different roles.
Solana and Kokoa, for instance, handle public relations. They’re the ones guiding me on a tour of the fish farm.
It’s been a few years since the last time I was here, and while the basics idea is still the same, there’s a number of changes that have been made. The most obvious is a new room, specifically designed for the fish farm.
“The room was built in 2018,” says Kokoa (it was built with a grant from Meikle, adds Mr Deeley). “We’re able to use it to put Leviathan in, because it is our biggest tank that we have.”
Leviathan is one of four tanks currently in use, and was the first one to be prepared. And it is the biggest one, big enough to hold about 4500 litres. Inside is a box that is filled with bottle caps.
Why bottle caps? “It was a cheaper way to filter for the chemicals. We do have bio balls that will filter the chemicals for us, but bottle caps are cheaper. It’s the same thing with those plants over there,” says Kokoa, pointing to a floating plant. “Those are spider plants. We have a bunch of people who have donated spider plants to us. They filter out the phosphorus in the water because if there is high levels of phosphorus, it’s harmful to the fish.”
The plastic of the bottle caps don’t actually do the work; rather, they provide a surface where nitrifying bacteria can live, which are the bacteria that will convert ammonia—which is harmful to fish—into nitrates.
The caps have additional holes drilled in them to give more surface area for the water to pass over.
Another pump pulls water from the tank and runs it into a reservoir, then through a sand filter, into a second reservoir, then back into the tank. “We run the water through the reservoir to make it a little easier to be able to pump water,” says Nick, another student who helped build the system. “With the sand filter being up on the table stuff and then having it run out into the other reservoir. It just makes it a lot easier for us to use with the reservoirs pumping water from place to place.”
In the tank are hundreds of tiny goldfish, currently about the size of guppies (a few larger ones swimming about are not overachievers. These are ones that Mr Deeley has brought in from home).
As we are discussing the tank, Noah comes to check on the fish. Noah is the head of the health department. His job, he says, is to test all the water and see what the ph levels are at, as well as how much nitrate/nitrite is in the water. “It’s been really good so far,” says Noah. “We haven’t really had any bad spikes in the levels yet. We still check them just to be sure, but they’ve been good.”
How many fish have been dying? Noah points me to another student, who goes by the appellation “Shadow Friedrick McIntyre”. Shadow is in charge of Animal Care and checks and counts the dead fish. “We’re not very high on mortality,” says Shadow. “Over the weekend we had seven mortalities. There were a few others before that. We’re doing actually really well on this.”
Shadow shows me a spreadsheet, which includes data from previous years. “At the beginning when they’re small, it’s not a really a problem from what I’ve seen. It’s when they get bigger. And then of course they need to be separated into the other tanks. Other than that, they’re doing great.”
Shadow says the fish are going to start getting fed more frequently, as they get bigger. Every weekday, instead of every second day.
“The bigger ones feed first, and the smaller ones won’t feed in that area until they leave,” says Shadow. “So I tend to spread out the foods so the bigger ones will go to one area and the smaller ones will go to another. When we were only feeding Monday, Wednesday, Friday, the bigger ones would get full and the smaller ones would only get the leftovers. But we’re moving on to feeding them every day because we are starting to see them eat the corpses. I think I caught one earlier trying to eat another fish that was still alive. So we are upping our food.”
In the main shop are a trio of tanks, each in a various stage of readiness. As the fish get bigger, they will be separated into these tanks, based on how big they are.
At the first (or last, depending which way you look at these things) tank, called Big A, Kyra is in charge of getting everything set up. “I’m trying to make this tank run like Leviathan. You saw the tank and filtering system there? Well, this is exactly the same, but miniaturized, so the tank is much smaller, and the piping is smaller therefore, and we have a lot more problems to deal with since they have the drain. If that tank overflows, it goes down a drain on the floor. If our tank overflows? I think the classroom is tilted that way. So it flows back into all the offices, all of the tool stuff and kind of makes everything gross. So we have kiddy pools under everything. I also do inventory. So I take account of everything that we have, including all of the pipes, all of the pumps, all of the little pots that we don’t think you need, but they might come in useful at some point. I have got to keep track of how many we have so that if we need to buy more, we’re not just buying the same stuff that we already have.”
This is Kyra’s second year working in the fish farm, and says most of the system they’ve built is based off of a real fish from hatchery. “It’s what a hatchery would have. They would have all the different systems they would have the stand pipes and everything.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean that this year’s group is just copy and pasting from a hatchery, or even from what was done last year. “Last year, we didn’t have the standpipe where it came out from the bottom. We had a standpipe that it came out from the side and went up instead. So this year we kind of completely changed around our designs. So now we have a standing standpipe we have the piping in the bottom, which was not there last year. We also have changed the design of our biofilters. Before, it was outside of the tank and the water went into the biofilter through a bunch of bottle caps, through a mesh divider and then back into the tank. This year we put our bio filters into the tank so now it flows into the bio filter and it overflows the top so that it just keeps recirculating back into our systems. You learn what the basics of everything does: Here’s how this filter works. Here’s how this filter works. Go forth and do. You get a basic idea, And then you have to figure it out. You have to do problem solving how to fix it if anything goes wrong.”
Kyra says they’re hoping that keeping the biofilter in the tank will be more efficient. “Last year, we had the biofilter outside the tank, and sometimes the bottle caps would get through the mesh sieve or flow over and get caught on one on the out port. That would cause all of the water to overflow and get everywhere. But this year since we have the biofilters in the tank, it gives us a chance to fix it if something goes wrong with it, and the water and bottle caps are staying in the tank so there’s less of the possibility of it going onto the floor.
Kokoa flags Jessica down as she’s walking by. Jessica is head of the security department.
“Are you having a big problem with people stealing goldfish,” I ask?
“I’ve set up these camera and keep an eye on the different reservoirs just in case there’s a flood or a leak. If there is, then either Mr Deeley or the team can come down to the school as soon as they can to fix the leak or whatever else has gone wrong.”
Jessica also points out that anyone can check in on the fish farm on the school’s website. For privacy issues, the cameras are not live during school hours.
Next up on the tour is Kole, who is head of the Safety Department. While he is also in charge of one of the smaller tanks, like Kyra, his job is to make sure that everyone is safe on the job. “They biggest hazard is when the water spills, the floors get very slippery. I will be getting grip tape on the floor very soon. I make sure that when people are working in the wood shop, they’re always wearing safety glasses. Everyone watches out for each other and watches out for themselves and I do a weekly safety meeting with everyone and to talk about issues. There’s very low hazard rating. It’s really slips and trips with hoses and everything so watch where you’re going.” He points to an extension cable run to one of the tanks. “That’s open right now because we’re plugging stuff in and out. But normally we’d have a bag over top of that, so if any water does spill out, it spills on the bag and runs down the floor rather than getting on their actual electrical stuff. Otherwise, all the pumps and float switches are waterproof. They’re built to be in water. So perfect. A lot of our electrical cables are also mounted to the ceiling to keep them out of the way.”
Over on the first (or last) tank, Celeste is working on transferring a design for the tank from her sketchbook and onto the tank. Celeste is head of the art department, and in charge of the visual presentation of the project, from the logo to tank design to posters for events to wet floor signs. “One of the things I’m doing this year is coming up with names and designs for each tank because originally they were kinda dull. This one was ‘Bee tank’.”
Celeste points to the new design. “Now it’s Poseidon. We also have Kraken and Big A. That’s a joke tank.”
While there are many aspects to the job, Celeste says coming up with the names and logos for the tanks is the most fun. “I have a sheet here with all the possible names. I had Megalodon, Ursula, King Crab, Mariana and the one that got picked—because we do a vote for each name—was Poseidon. So that’s definitely been my favorite part.”
Set apart from all the action in the tiny teacher’s office is Shelby, the office manager. “I work on our costs and our accounting sheets. I manage all of the filing. Currently I’m working on our money management and our sheets for the camera systems. But we have schedules for who will be watching when, so I have to create those. And I do a lot of the organization in here. I keep track of inventory and I also oversee a lot of the departments that don’t include construction.”
Compared to the action happening out on the floor, it might seem that Shelby has drawn the short straw, but that’s not true. “I enjoy organization a lot and like accounting and money management, so it’s the perfect position for me. I would like to see myself being put in a position where I can do this as a job, and this definitely helps with that.”
Which brings us, finally, to Logan, who is the foreman. He gestures around the room. “We’re just in the process of getting our last couple of tanks up and running, working on a few minor kinks. The teams are working great. That group is testing out a new prototype filter over there. And, you know, my job is to make sure everyone’s staying on task and getting things done. I make sure they’re doing it safely and efficiently, but also being creative with it. I want their input as well. I’m not just going to delegate tasks to them and tell them to see it out. I want them to offer their ideas and build their own vision for how things are supposed to go and what they think. And if it doesn’t work out? Then we come up with something new.”
All three tanks are slightly different than the other ones. “It’s cool to see, because with each different person that’s on the tank, you see little differences in them that those specific people put into that tank.”
The fish farm had an open house on Halloween; they are planning a second open house sometime in the near future.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
