I've Moved My First Fish Into The New Lab

I just moved the juvenile scarlet shiners I've raised from little babies into my new lab. All 7 of them are in my odd 10 (or 12?) gallon tank with a built-in top screen. I think they're in shock, as moved fish usually are. The big 20 gallon in the old teaching lab with a bigger school of scarlets, stripeds and bluntnoses will hopefully be moved this week in my next burst of energy.

Weather permitting we're going out next Friday to Limestone Creek north of here to collect juvenile scarlets, and on Saturday we'll hopefully get out to Estill Fork in Jackson County, downstream from the Walls of Jericho. This project with two students will hopefully document the growth of YOY scarlet shiners in two somewhat different streams, a lowland stream in an agricultural area and a highland stream in a remote mountain area. We also hope to examine gut contents, which would probably not show any surprises. In truth I honestly don't know what to expect in terms of growth patterns, and whether or not they should be especially different between the two streams. I'm still trying to find relevant literature. Maybe no one else has done this with North American cyprinids because it's too stupid? I'd like to think not(!). On the Friday trip we also hope to collect and keep 50-60 live fish for my developing experiment on the effects of different doses of exogenous 11-KT on brain development and growth. I think I found the test doses, used on carp: 1 microgram per kilogram of body weight, and 5 micrograms per kilogram of body weight. That's a fantastically small amount of 11-KT, but that reflects just how potent it is as an androgen. I'm leaning to doing shallow abdominal injections using a 27 gauge needle, which hopefully wouldn't be the equivalent of bayonetting the fish. I'll keep you posted, of course.