KAMSACK — Returning to school on Sept. 2 to begin the 2025-26 term, students of the Kamsack Comprehensive Institute discovered that the 90-gallon fish tank in the school’s main servery contains some aquatic plants and tropical fish.
But that’s not what the students saw in the tank when they left school in June, because since the middle of last winter, the tank had held a batch of tiny, growing rainbow trout fingerlings in water that was kept no warmer than 10 C.
Rather than emptying the tank, and then refilling it in January when a new batch of fish eggs is due to arrive, Darren Kitsch, a teacher heading the project, said it was decided to maintain the tank as a regular, scenic aquarium with tropical fish and plants.
The school is participating in the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation’s (SWF) Fish in the Schools (FinS) program and, in January, the school will receive another batch of about 100 trout eggs that will be incubated and then placed into the tankful of cold water where they will be monitored and fed for about four months until they can be released into a body of water.
The FinS program provides Saskatchewan students with a firsthand look at fish and aquatic habitats in their very own classroom, according to information from SWF. The program involves raising trout from eggs to fry before releasing them in a provincially stocked waterbody.
In January/February, eyed trout eggs are placed into special classroom incubators, the information said. Over the following three to four months, students care for their fish by monitoring and maintaining the conditions required for their trout to thrive. In May/June, the trout are ready to be released by the students.
This will be the third year that the program is being held at KCI, Kitsch said, adding that the Kamsack branch of the SWF provided the funding for all the equipment, which includes the tank, aeration and cooling equipment, an incubator and all the food required by the growing fish.
The Kamsack branch provided over $2,000 worth of equipment for the project, he said. “It’s a very well thought-out program.”
Kitsch explained how he and his students monitored and fed the rainbow trout, and cleaned the filters weekly from the time they were placed in the tank until June, when he and his students, including E.J. Walterson, released their fish into Logan Green Trout Pond, a “natural ecosystem with educational opportunities” at Yorkton.
He said that a curriculum guide for students from Kindergarten to Grade 12 indicates that all students can benefit from observations made with the FinS program.
“We had a good success rate last year when we had a survival of between 70 and 80 per cent of the fish,” Kitsch said, adding that Walter Lesiuk, the Kamsack branch’s fisheries liaison, is the program’s contact with the branch.
By the time the new batch of fish arrives in the new year, Kitsch said that the tropical fish and plants will have been removed from the tank and the water will be cooled to accept the tiny rainbow trout fingerlings and the students and everyone else visiting the servery will be able to watch them as they develop.
