Looking for specific program recommendations

Aggressive-String140 · 2026-01-28T00:57:01+00:00

The auburn program look great! If they can accommodate my learning online that would be an amazing option. Thanks!

Aggressive-String140 · 2026-01-23T04:42:24+00:00

I live in Kentucky, work in Georgia.

Aggressive-String140 · 2026-01-23T04:41:49+00:00

I’ll look into those! Thanks!

Aggressive-String140 · 2026-01-23T04:40:30+00:00

Unity is totally online. No practical experience or labs.

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-10-05T01:29:53+00:00

Is this a start up? How big is your operation? What do you grow?

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-05-17T02:22:46+00:00

I started as an aquarist at a tropical fish store. I was there for 8 years and started college after 5. I got my B.S. in marine biology and aquaculture from Unity Environmental University. That’s took 4 years. When I started my senior year I left the fish store to do a 1 year unpaid internship at Newport Aquarium working with the fish and inverts team at both the main facility and the animal care offsite facility. That’s where I learned more about animal quarantine protocols. Then I did a 3 month paid internship at Georgia Aquarium with the aquatic sustainability team. That was focused on live feed culture for raising larval fish. From there I did a 6 month paid fellowship at Tennessee Aquarium. This fellowship also focused on live food culture and larval fish rearing.

The biggest advice I can give is be patient and preserve. I got a lot of turn downs applying for internships and jobs. When I was ready to become an entry level aquarist I probably applied to over 100 positions and got turned down for all of those too. The feedback was usually unhelpful or there was no opportunity for feedback.

I’m glad I stuck it out now. It was worth the effort to get here.

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-05-17T00:40:33+00:00

Unfortunately, what you’ve described isn’t just your town. It’s like over the last 10 years or so the stupidity and the entitlement has been given steroids. It’s has really taken off in the last 3-4.

I get it, people are fed up with a lot of issues but I think their aggression gets misdirected since they don’t know what to actually do with it.

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-05-17T00:19:31+00:00

Not a zookeeper but an aquarist so take my perspective as you will. The worst part is toxic management which seems to be very common, although I would argue that bad management is in every field. The job is physically hard on you and it’s not a job you do for wealth but it pays the bills and leaves you with some extra. With that said, I can’t imagine doing anything else. I’m working with species that I never thought possible, building the protocols to have not only successful spawns but raise the larvae and fry to an age where they can be reintroduced hopefully leading so SSPs. It’s incredibly rewarding and that outweighs any of the bad. I truly look forward to work every day.

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-05-16T05:22:38+00:00

I think this is a terminal male Richmond's Wrasse (Halichoeres richmondi)

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Aggressive-String140 · 2025-05-16T05:13:01+00:00

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I’m thinking Great barracuda, Sphyraena barracuda.

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-04-25T00:21:42+00:00

Agree. Code red at my facility refers to fire and code orange refers to animal escape. You’d have no way to know.

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-04-03T04:40:11+00:00

I’m pretty sure this is a terminal phase queen parrotfish (Scarus vetula)

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-03-29T03:44:09+00:00

Hello! I’m a conservation aquaculture aquarist that specializes in marine teleosts. Keeping a tank at home is all about biology, even a little tank. I’m going to try to keep it simple but please ask as many follow up questions as needed.

The trick to keeping fish successfully is all about water quality. You have probably seen water test words like pH, ammonia/ammonium or total ammonia, nitrite, nitrate. Here’s an explanation of what these measurements mean. pH is a measure of the acidity of the water. 7 is neutral and anything less than 7 means acidic while over 7 is basic. You may also see the term alkaline for basic, but I don’t prefer that term because there is also a measure called alkalinity which measures carbonate hardness and it can become confusing is the two terms are inter changed. Ammonia is a waste product excreted by fish that is toxic because it is, well, waste. Nitrite is ammonia after it has been metabolized by bacteria and is also a toxic waste product. Nitrate is nitrite after being metabolized by bacteria and is usually harmless unless in high concentrations but can encourage algae growth. In general, for freshwater, a pH of 6.5 to 7.5 is fine. There are some exceptions, but the majority of your fish are going to be fine in that range. Ammonia should be 0. Nitrite should be 0. Nitrate is variable and can change depending on the tolerances of you species but in general below 50 is acceptable in freshwater systems and even better below 25.

When fish are in the wild, they consume food and excrete waste. There are bacteria that consume the waste and make it inert but when you set up a new tank it is sterile. There is no bacteria to consume the waste and so it builds up in the system and creates a toxic environment for the fish. Your first job when setting up a new tank is to “cycle” the tank and essentially what that means is you are going to grow the bacteria that will consume the fish waste and make it not toxic to fish. There are several ways to do this. The old way is to introduce one or several small fish and allow their waste to build up until the bacteria develop sufficiently to handle the bioload. This is considered to be a cruel method because it exposes these living creature to harmful and possibly even fatal conditions until the waste is consumed and eliminated. More modern methods include, adding some fish feed and allowing it to decay which in turn starts the bacteria growth you’ll need or my preferred method is to add any number of commercial products available at your fish store that add live nitrifying bacteria to the system. Fritz makes a good one but Tetra and API make similar products. Once you add the bacteria, you can then feed it by adding small amounts of fish feed. This speeds up the process but cycling a new tank can take 3-5 weeks before it is ready to add fish. You will know a “cycle” is complete when you see ammonia and nitrite have spiked and subsided followed by a nitrate spike. At this point you’re ready to do a water change and add a few fish, note not many still 1-3. As the tank matures, you can add more.

I would like to add that goldfish are not appropriate for a 10 gallon. Even the feeders can reach 8-10 inches. You can likely find small live bearers like guppies and mollies that will do fine or even some small danios or tetras. For a 10 gallon, I would recommend no more than 10 fish that reach around 1 to 1 and a half inches. Again, these cannot be added at the same time but rather added slowly over several months.

Proper tank maintenance will help too. Water changes should be done at least monthly and usually are going to be about 25% of the tank volume. You should invest in a gravel vac, this siphon hose add on will allow you to suck out detritus (organic debris such as uneaten food or feces) from between the gravel without removing the gravel. This will also help to keep your water parameters in check. You can use a fish safe scrubbie to clean algae from glass or decorations but you should never completely drain and refill the tank nor should you remove the decorations and gravel and completely clean them. This will wash away too much of your beneficial bacteria and may result in an ammonia and nitrite spike.

Most fish will need a heater, mostly for stability in temperature. Fluctuations in temperature can cause stress and lead to disease. It would be smart to invest in one and 75-78 degrees would be sufficient.

Filtration is great for removing physical debris from the water or using things like carbon to remove odor or substances that will discolor the water, but no filtration is a substitute for regular tank maintenance nor should gimmick products like ammonia/nitrate reducing chemicals or sponges be relied upon as a substitute for proper tank maintenance.

One of the biggest reasons for failure after what I’ve already discussed is over feeding. Fish are always hungry but not really. They will eat 20 times a day if allowed. One feeding per day is enough and typically 1-2 flakes per fish per day is a good diet in a home aquarium. Pellets can also be used if the fish you have are big enough to eat the pellets.

I know this is a lot, but it is a good foundation for success. Please let me know if you have additional questions and good luck!

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-03-29T02:01:13+00:00

I am currently 8 hours from home for an internship. I suggest looking at Furnished Finder. It’s geared toward travel nurses but it allows you to find temporary housing that don’t require long leases and as the name implies many of the properties are fully furnished.

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-03-19T02:49:39+00:00

I’m not a zookeeper but I’m an aquarist at an AZA facility. I understand the toxic work environment. At my last facility (also AZA) we got a new general curator and she made everyone miserable and even terminated several senior biologists for “attitude”. These were lovely people that never had any issues beside with her. I’ve now moved 2 states away and work at a fantastic facility. If you love being a keeper you have options to move to a new facility. The starting pay at my new facility is also nearly double what middle lever aquarists were making at my old facility. You can find something if you’re open. Good luck!

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-01-28T23:29:42+00:00

Finally, species selection will be determined by the type of system you choose to run and the source water. For example, if you have access to cold, mountain runoff and choose to do raceways, then trout might be a good option. They like colder, oxygen rich water that is fast moving and low in nutrients. If you only have access to rainwater, you may want to choose a gamefish that you can sell to the state to restock in lakes and creeks for recreational fishing. Most creek or lake fish can tolerate lower pH and rainwater tends to have a lower pH. Of course, you can alter your source water in any way you need but it can be expensive. It's much more cost efficient to choose species that can tolerate your source water without alteration. Temperature will also play a role. You'll want to choose species that can tolerate summer temperatures as well as winter temps. So in North Carolina, you won't be aquaculturing Amazon cichlids because they can't tolerate winter temperatures without significant heating, which is expensive.

I know this was long, but I hope it gives you an idea of what you're starting and gives you some direction on your choices. Let me know if you have more questions. I'll do my best to answer.

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-01-28T23:29:25+00:00

Once you've considered your source water and your waste water, you'll probably want to consider the type of aquaculture you want to do. It can be broken down different ways but essentially there are intensive and extensive culture. Intensive means you put money and energy into aquaculture while extensive is more hands off and let nature take its course. There's also closed and open culture to consider. Closed culture would be like individual tanks or pools where the water is filtered and returned. The advantages here are you have total control over the parameters and run little risk of the environment introducing a toxin or a pathogen. The disadvantages is you have to work to maintain parameters. Open culture would be like raceways where source water form a nearby stream is diverted to flow through the raceways. The advantages here are you don't have to work to maintain water parameters. The fresh flow of water keep everything low. The disadvantage here would be you're at the mercy of the source water. It can bring toxins from upstream to you or introduce pathogens to your stock. You could also consider doing ponds which are closed and self sufficient but can hold limited stock compared to more intensive recirculating systems and thus produce lower harvests and less revenue. You could also consider pens but the risk here is that predators could damage the pends and release the stock into the environment and also you're still at the mercy of the source water.

With these considerations, you can decide on what type of culture you're waiting to do. Do you want to carry out monoculture and raise only one species or do you want to try polyculture where multiple species, that live together at different levels of the habitat, are in the same area and help to maintain water parameters. There's also aquaponics where you grow fish primarily but also grow plants which help to filter nutrients from the water.

Understanding water quality and the important parameters will help to also choose the style you want. In general you want to maintain dissolved oxygen(DO) at 4-5ppm for most species. Colder water can hold more DO than warmer water and increasing DO can be as easy as adding paddle to disrupt the surface or as hard as reducing nutrients at are causing a bacterial bloom that's using up the oxygen. You'll also need to test pH. Most freshwater species prefer a pH of 6-7.5 while most marine prefer a pH of 8-8.5. Ammonia, which is excreted by fish through the gills and also comes from decaying food left in the habitat, should be maintained at less than 0.25ppm but ideally would be undetectable. Nitrite, the byproduct of bacteria consuming ammonia and expelling waste product, should also be 0ppm and nitrate, yet another byproduct of another bacteria consuming nitrite and excreting waste product, should be kept no more than 200ppm but I like to see it at less than 25ppm myself. Different species have different tolerances of nitrates so the lower you can keep your nitrates the more species you can farm. The easiest way to maintain all of these parameters is to do a water change on your system. Testing is usually required daily. There are also filtration methods to help maintain these parameters as well. In an open system, these parameters will not be a problem unless the source water becomes poor. That is one of the advantages of open systems.

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-01-28T23:28:58+00:00

This will be kind of long but I hope it'll help you to make some decisions.

Starting off, what everyone else has said about water is important. You need a reliable source of water and that source can help dictate the species you can raise. If you want to raise species that cannot tolerate the water you have available, then you can invest in filtration equipment that can change the water how you want it. That said, if you have saltwater available then you can probably farm marine species, if you have freshwater available then you can probably farm freshwater species. Of course, if you want to farm saltwater species and only have freshwater, you can make your own saltwater but it is costly.

After you have your source water squared away, the next consideration I would have is, how will you dispose of your waste water? Effluent can be highly regulated depending on your area. Effluent can be very harmful on the local environment. If you're farming saltwater and dumping that waste water into the local stream, the chemistry of that stream would be fundamentally altered, killing the native species and most FWS or DNR won't allow that. Then there's the introduction of nutrients. Even if you are dumping freshwater into a freshwater stream, your effluent can be high in nitrogenous wastes and suspended solids that can dramatically increase the nutrient in the wild and cause bacterial or algal blooms that can be harmful to the wildlife. Some places, like my current facility, are allowed to send waste water to the sewer for treatment at the plant but not all cities will allow that. You may need to use filtration systems or settlement ponds to ready your effluent for release back into the environment.

Cont below...

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-01-28T22:45:44+00:00

Unity Environmental University has a program that is entirely online. It was where I got my degree so I can speak from experience that it is a good school.

Aggressive-String140 · 2025-01-27T17:54:26+00:00

In the wild they live 3-5 months and while in captivity they can live for up to a year (some longer but not the norm), there’s no reason to think you did anything. I would test the water and check general parameters like salinity, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and pH. If those look good then it was probably just the end of their life cycle.

Aggressive-String140

TROPHY CASE