Giant Salvinia

The Giant Salvinia is an invasive plant in which Lewisville Lake residents do not have to be highly cautious of. But the main problems this plant causes elsewhere are as follows:
-blocks sunlight for plants underneath it
-reduces crop production in certain areas
-prevents natural exchange of gas between water and air
-grows rapidly
In order to prevent the spreading of this plant elsewhere, there are bans on selling, transporting, spreading, and relocating of this plant.

Dragonflies

Hello big fish!
This evening we're going to be discussing some facts about Dragonflies! Their scientific name is Odonata. They are all predators, mainly feeding on mosquitos. Most adults are generally found near bodies of water because Odonatas are classified as aquatic insects. Their eggs are laid in water or on vegetation near water, which helps carry nutrients to them. Dragonflies are ancient insects that have been around since dinosaur times, with fossils from the Carboniferous period that had wingspans of over a meter! In that period of time, they would be bigger than the modern day hawk. 
Thanks for reading, fish friends!

Naegleria fowleri

Hey big fish.
The Naegleria fowleri is a protist that is found in Texas. It causes Primary Amebic Meningoencephalitis, which is a very fatal disease. The symptoms of this are nausea, headaches, and stomach aches and a good way to prevent would be to plug your nose whenever you're around it and to immediately see a physician if you think you have it.
Thanks for reading!

Dichotomous Key

Good afternoon, big fish!
Today we're going to dicuss the importance of using a dichotmous key when assessing a water body! These keys are used to separate characteristics of a broad variety of organisms in a water body to very descriptive and precise characteristics of organisms. We separated our key into odor and non-odor to start out with and ended with the specific names of the algae! Here's a picture to show you the other details.

Dissolved Oxygen

Hi fish friends!
So I'd like to explain a dissolved oxygen demonstration to you that we did in class. You see, dissolved oxygen is a relative measure of the amount of oxygen that is dissolved or carried in a given medium. In our example, we had four 2-liters that were all filled with water, but had other things as well: 
-Control bottle: tap water and gravel
-Bottle #1: tap water, gravel, a plant
-Bottle #2: tap water, gravel, a plant, lake water
-Bottle #3: tape water, gravel, a plant, lake water, a fish
We checked the temperature, Conductivity, pH, and Dissolved Oxygen percentage of each bottle, and the results are in the picture below.

Algae and Invertabrates

Evening, big fish!
I'd like to talk tonight about Algae and Invertebrates and how they can be used to monitor an ecosystem. Algae plays an important role in an ecosystem because it utilizes light energy in the process of reducing CO2. It is a primary producer, which benefits other organisms in the ecosystem and it produces large amounts of nutrients as well. The role of invertebrates is very important too--they make up a great majority of all macroscopic life in the sea. They provide nutrients for other organisms in an aquatic system, which in turn allows them to supply energy to the organisms as a food source.