Teaching aquarium innovator and 5th grade teacher at West Harpswell Elementary School located in Maine, Mrs. Giberson and some her students share their science classroom tank experience through a interesting video. Topics include: maintenance, feeding, and handling the creatures of the cold-water touch tank. Enjoy! Grants Available
This video of a science classroom tank is one of the best that Touch-Tank as ever seen. Many schools, museums, educational centers and even businesses make the decision to install a science classroom tank aquarium as a means to reach students and educate customers.
They reduce stress allowing for superior learning, minimize nervousness relaxing students helping them learn and lessens anxiety assisting small children who aren’t used to being away their parents adjust to the new environment.
They show students how fish live, demonstrate the value of natural aquatic habitats, teach children responsibilities as they care for the live inhabitants, and encourage respect as caretakers learn to nurture and care for those more vulnerable than themselves.
Aquariums teach people about the importance of marine and aquatic resources and they are great fun! If you want to explore the possibilities of supplying a superior teaching experience to your students, apply for a Touch Tanks for Kids Grant and discover how to bring a science classroom tank to a location near you.
Having an educational aquarium in the classroom has a number of benefits, 
including learning, health and environmental benefits. This is why so many educators use touch tanks to reach students, parents and yes, even administrators. Touch-Tank hopes that you enjoyed this video of a science classroom tank has much as we did!
This site is created and maintained by Shannon Mae Development, Inc.
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A horseshoe crab makes a nice resident for your marine aquariums. Touch-Tank caught up with Coastal Carol an expert in intertidal exploration to learn more about the horseshoe crabs that have survived for over 250 million years. The video depicts some of what we learned about the horseshoe crab.
Contact Touch Tanks for Kids to bring an interactive aquarium experience to your students. They will learn more when observing a horseshoe crab molt and mature. Grants available!
Caution:
Handle with care; you can pinch your fingers between the two parts of the shell.
Mating
Each spring during the high tides of the new and full moons, horseshoe crabs come to the sandy shorelines to spawn. They lay there green eggs in sand and depend on waves to wash the sand over the nest.
Males are generally smaller than their mates. They cluster along the water’s edge and wait patiently for the females to arrive. The male attaches to the female’s shell with glove-like claws and awaits high tide. He fertilizes the eggs when he is pulled over the nest where the female deposit as many as 20,000 green eggs in sand. After the spring ritual is over, they return to the deeper waters of the ocean.
Horseshoe Crab Facts
They are not really crabs 
They are related to scorpions, ticks and spiders
They have their own classification (Class Merostomata)
Their blood is blue
They are not dangerous
They are found along the western shores of the Atlantic Ocean from Maine to the Yucatan with another three species living in the coastal waters from Japan to Indonesia
They can go a year without eating
Their hard, curved shells protect them from predators.
They endure extreme temperatures and salinity changes
Their tails push them through the sand and muck, act as a rudder, and help them turnover
Their central mouth is surrounded by its legs 
Their eggs take about 2 weeks to hatch
They have 2 compound eyes on the top of their shells with a range of about 3 feet
They can swim upside down and use a dozen legs and a flap hiding nearly 200 flattened gills to propel themselves
They usual feed at night but will eat anytime
They burrow for worms and mollusks
They grow by twenty-five percent while molting
The larvae molt six times during the first year
After sixteen molts, they completely mature into adults, maturity takes
between 9 and 12 years
Before the arrival of artificial fertilizers, they were dried for used as fertilizer and poultry food supplements.
Some fish eat the juveniles and the recently molted
Their eggs are important food for migratory shore birds that pass over the Delaware Bay during the spring mating season
Extract from their blood is used to test the purity of medicines.
Parts of their shells speed blood clotting and are used for absorbent sutures. Read more on Horseshoe Crabs Love Marine Aquariums…
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Mr. Chrishan’s creature features assignment works as a wonderful way to reach students. Please, help Matthew expand his lessons to more students.
Every week Mr. Chrishan requires his students to observe and report on the habits of a sea creature. The creature features dwell in a large reef aquarium located in his school’s library and small aquarium housed in the school’s laboratory. This learning exercise inspires his students to answer specific questions while they observe the natural behavior of the warm-water animals.
Matthew Chrishan believes a cold-water touch tank will help his students learn Science with less resistance because hands-on activates promote learning and will assist his students in recognizing that there is much to learn about the creature features our vast oceans including one of Matt’s passions, coral reefs.
Although the existence of cold-water corals is recognized for several hundreds of years, it is only since the early nineties that scientists have realized that large coral reef structures thrive in parts of the ocean that remain unexplored.
“Little is known about cold-water reef propagation,” says Dave Young Treasure of Capital District Marine Aquarist Society (CDMAS). Dave, who is available for marine science educational presentations, explains that more research and experimentation will help solve coral reef issues. “There is very little information about cold-water species available and this is why I introduced the touch tank concept to our club.”
The Capital District Marine Aquarist Society (CDMAS) is a group of reef-oriented individuals that hold informal, monthly meetings at a volunteer’s home.
Shellfish reefs and beds are essential to the health of marine ecosystems, and realistic and cost-effective solutions in conservation, restoration, and management will help regenerate shellfish reefs and aquarium hobbyist like Matt, Dave and the other members of CDMAS have contributed greatly to the understanding of coral reef propagation with educational such as creature features helping students improve understanding as well.
Dave wants Berlin High School of Berlin, New York get a touch tank and work 
with Matthew Chrishan to disseminate information about cold-water species and reef propagation. Matt has an abundance of knowledge to share and a cold-water touch tank aquarium equipped with a superior filtration system will defiantly advance our knowledge of the cold-water oceans that surround us.
To contribute to Berlin High School’s campaign or a program of your choice visit, Touch Tanks for Kids or contact Mike Martin at 207-944-9852 or mikemartin@touchtanksforkids.org
Your support will bring assignments such as creature features to more students. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
This site is created and maintained by Shannon Mae Development, Inc.
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Touch-Tank contributors recently had the pleasure of accompanying the 
executive director of Touch Tanks for Kids, Mike Martin, and two of his children, Kyera and Madelyn, on a trip to the Children’s Discovery Museum located at 171 Capital Street in Augusta, Maine. The museum’s director Valencia Schubert invited Mike to join the museum’s board after she discovered the world’s finest teaching aquarium while searching for ways to improve the museum.
Valencia grew up in Boothbay, a coastal Maine community where she learned all about the wonderful sea creatures of a Northern Atlantic cold-water touch tank. Valencia understood that providing children an opportunity to observe and occasionally interact with the creatures of the sea presents educational value and brings more children to the museum.
After two years of fund-raising, the Children’s Discovery Museum Touch Tank Project got some needed support when the museum’s board of director decided to move locations from Water Street to 171 Capital Street. The move created a lot of publicity because the board needed much help to successful move all the museum’s exhibits to the new, easily assessable Capitol Street location.
The publicity worked, the move was a success and as a result, a generous community member donated enough money when combined with the other donations and a Touch Tanks for Kids Grant to purchase a Marine Ecological Habitats’ aquarium for the museum’s visitor to enjoy. We hope that you enjoy the tour, visit the Children’s Discovery Museum located at 171 Capitol Street in Augusta, Maine today, and tell Valencia that Touch-Tank sent you!
This site is created and maintained by Shannon Mae Development, Inc.
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