This and That At The Hatchery

This is our second summer at Green Lake National Fish Hatchery and we are enjoying it as much this year as we did last year.

We stay as busy as we want and have a variety of projects to choose from.

Mowing needs to be done about once a week.  Mark mows while I use a weed trimmer.

The grass can get pretty tall if it's not cut back.

I asked the manager if they could buy a light weight battery powered trimmer for me because all the gas trimmers were too heavy and too long for me to use.  I was given the go ahead to get a very nice DeWalt trimmer.  It’s easy for me to use and Mark doesn’t have to do all the lawn work.

This year the hatchery has a new maintenance person.  We’re not helping out as much with maintenance but we still get to get our hands dirty every once in a while.

New mulching blades.

After the tiny indoor salmon were moved to outdoor tanks, we cleaned the indoor feeders.

64 feeders, to be precise!

After the little salmon that are moved outside to the big tanks get some size on them, they get fed from large feeders and their smaller feeders need to be cleaned.

Cleaning outdoor feeders.

72 feeders to be precise.

Hanging feeders.  We have to put them someplace.

The egg trays won’t be needed again until November so we have all summer.  This year the brown trays will be replaced with new green trays.  We’re hoping that, after spending hours cleaning the brown trays, they can be given to another hatchery for use.

Pressure washing egg trays

The recycle center is a short trip down the road.  Mostly we take cardboard and plastic.  Aluminum and plastic with a return fee is given to the local animal shelter for their fundraiser.

Recycle

  

We put our brand new bluebird houses in the ground and they are ready for next spring.

New bluebird houses in the ground.

We’re in charge of feeding the brood (4 year olds), future brood (3 year olds) and future-future brood (2 year olds) three times a day.

Hand-feeding fish

It’s fun to see them coming to the surface to eat.

As the fish get larger, so does their food.

4mm, 6mm, 9mm

Mark gives tours of the hatchery.  Some weeks he might not give any tours and some weeks he might give 3 in one day.

Mark enjoys giving tours of the hatchery.

There’s always something that needs cleaning! The hatchery heats water for the eggs and inside fish during the coldest part of the winter, and uses a heat-exchanger to recover some of that heat before the water is discharged.  The heat-exchanger uses a stack of 144 shaped steel plates, and the plates get coated with "gunk" from both the incoming water, and (especially) the outgoing water.


It had been a while since the exchanger plates had been cleaned and water flow was suffering. So all of the plates got pulled out and washed.

They are pretty dirty!

A hard spray of water gets most of the gunk off.

A good scrubbing with a heavy brush gets the rest off.

All cleaned up and ready to use next winter.  

We only had to clean about 100 of them (2/3 of the stack).

In addition to cleaning there is also fixing.

Patching holes in one of the 30’ tanks.

We do a lot of work here but it’s fun and every day the staff lets us know how much they appreciate us.