Little hearts beating

Our Kinders were able to watch the alevin's heart beat with the hand held 50x microscope. Even without the microscope you can view the heart beating (look for the small red dot in the far right alevin's throat above the egg sac). Bonus question - why do fish have their heart in their throat and not the chest like us?

Answer - Our heart in in our chest because it needs to be near our lungs to properly oxygenate the blood.  In all animals, the cardiovascular (heart/blood) and the pulmonary (lungs) are closely linked.  Since lungs don't work underwater, fish use their gills to capture oxygen from the water. Therefore, we would expect to find the salmon heart close to the gills.

The Woodlawn family has grown by 1!

The first egg hatched today!

Salmon Success!

All of the Woodlawn salmon eggs survived the winter storm and are growing bigger!  If we had lost power during the storm the tank water temperature would have started rising to unsafe levels for salmon development.

First baby photos

We were able to take some photos of our salmon eggs with our 50x microscope - you can see there is room to grow in the eggs and how well developed their eyes are already!

The salmon eggs have arrived! 

Thank you US Fish and Wildlife and Jeffrey Johnson.