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Summer Session Kansan Friday, July 23.1965
Yes, KU Has Its Fish Lab
By Kit Gunn
"Could you direct me to the fish lab?"
"The what?"
So little known is the Fisheries Laboratory, located west of Iowa Street and south of 19th Street, that the average student is somewhat surprised to learn of its existence. However, the lab, under the direction of Dr. Frank B. Cross, associate professor of zoology, is actually a thriving operation.
The laboratory was constructed on Endowment Association property in 1954 by legislative appropriations. The buildings at the lab are made of two small houses taken from what is now the parking lot of Allen Field House.
THE STATE Biological Survey operates the lab.
Enclosed by a high wire-link fence, the laboratory is composed of 11 rectangular ponds and a larger reservoir. Each pond has a surface area of 1/10 acre and is filled from the reservoir, which is located above and north of the ponds, to a depth of .745 meters (approximately 29 1/3 inches).
The reservoir itself is filled by rain running off the hills surrounding it.
Nine of the ponds are open their entire length, but two of them are fenced into five divisions. This allows conditions to be kept more even among the fish being tested.
FOR EXPERIMENTS that require even more controllable conditions than the sectioned ponds allow, a bank of concrete troughs exist. These troughs were filled with city water that had stood in a large metal tank to eliminate the
chlorine and other chemicals harmful to fish. The troughs are not in use this summer.
Working at the Fisheries Laboratory this summer are John Vandermeer, graduate student; Bill Simco, Mt. Burg, Ark., graduate student; Fred Busey, Emporia graduate student, and Ron Nolan, who graduated from Lawrence High School this spring.
The main project currently under study at the laboratory concerns the "experimental growth of channel catfish." For this experiment, the catfish in the sectioned ponds are fed respectively 2 per cent. 3 per cent, and 4 per cent of their body weight daily. They are fed Purina Fish Chow, a commercial preparation.
EVERY TWO WEEKS the ponds are seined (the fish removed by long nets) and the fish weighed. The data are then tabulated and sent to the Computation Center in Summerfield Hall for processing. There the information is fed into computers and the results sent back to the lab. These results include percentage gains and losses, graphs of the tabulated results and future feeding schedules.
This is not the only project underway, however. Also current is a study to determine the effect of thinning the numbers of catfish in mid-year. Chemical factors influencing catfish also are being investigated.
Besides catfish, bass and bluegill are under observation. The main project involving these is a study of hybrids between small-mouth bass and spotted bass. These hybrid bass are still small, but fathead
minnows and red shiners have been introduced into the ponds containing the bass to feed them when they become large.
THE MINNOWS breed on floating logs.
Information gained by the fish lab is used by local farmers, in addition to the Kaw Valley Fish Farm, which is an outgrowth of research at the Fisheries Laboratory.
Not all projects are conducted in the large outdoor ponds. Two indoor rooms are filled with aquariums and held at a constant temperature. In these aquariums the bass for the hybrid experiment are bred. Also being conducted indoors is a study by Ron Nolan, concerning "a predator-prey relationship." For this experiment small mosquito fish are placed in tanks containing larger carnivorous fish, and the reactions of both observed.
One outgrowth of Nolan's study is the adoption of a lab "mascot," a large shovel-nosed sturgeon.
THE EFFECT of the forces of nature is kept at a minimum at the fish lab by such devices as divided ponds designed to insure that all fish experimented upon receive the same conditions, except for the factor being tested. However, "acts of God" occasionally take their toll.
Last year's drought reduced the water level in the reservoir so far that ground plants sprang up on the bottom. When the reservoir was filled again, the decaying of the plants produced so much carbon dioxide and used up so much oxygen that several ponds of fish were killed.
The workers at the Fisheries Laboratory are pleased at recent rains.
SEINING THE POND-Every two weeks the ponds at the fish lab are seined to remove the fish for weighing. Holding one end of the long net is Fred Busey, Emporia graduate student.
SEINING COMPLETED - Ron Nolan returns one of the pond's large channel catfish to the water after the fish has been checked. Fred Busey holds the net while John Vandermeer, graduate student, removes dead algae from the seine. The algae, harmless to the fish in small quantities,makes seining difficult by clogging the net and concealing young fish.
CHECKING WATER SAMPLE-Ron Nolan, who graduated from Lawrence High School this spring, checks a specimen of the water in one of the 11 experimental ponds at the Fisheries Laboratory west of Iowa Street.