Fishkeeper Fry 2018

Maidenhead Aquatics is once again embracing its popular Fishkeeper Fry programme, designed to teach primary school children aged between 7-8 years, about responsible fishkeeping, by giving them their very own aquarium to develop and nurture in their school.

The programme runs for eight weeks, beginning with teaching the children how to set up an aquarium, adding live plants and learning about the biology behind a healthy tank. By the end of the eight week programme the children will have learnt about and added five different species of fish into their aquarium, watching it thrive in their classroom!

Each week, the programme is designed to teach the class a specific topic relating to successful fishkeeping, whilst also allowing them to discover the wonders of their new hobby. This learning initiative is led by an interactive series of videos that is released weekly on the Maidenhead Aquatics website and YouTube Channel throughout the course of the programme. The videos have been designed and created by the Maidenhead Aquatics production team, Fishkeeper Films, specifically for primary school children. 

The videos show the children, step-by-step, what they will be doing for their aquarium that week, provide them with information on various fishkeeping topics, and even ask questions, which combined with their weekly task sheets, keeps the class engaged and excited for the following week’s video and tasks. Maidenhead also run a ‘Fishkeeper of the Week’ award, giving the child which shows the most commitment to the project a chance to be featured on the fishkeeper.co.uk website, alongside other competitions such as best drawings and best aquarium, submitted via photographs from the teachers.

In order to make this programme happen, the livestock, guides, information packs and video course have been created and supplied by the Marketing team at Maidenhead Aquatics. With the support of API and Fluval, the aquarium and all the equipment needed to successfully set up the tank have also been provided to each school that signed up for the programme, as an invaluable learning tool, completely free of charge.

Fishkeeper Fry began on the 15th January with an amazing 80 schools onboard and our industry is excited to welcome so many young members into the world of fishkeeping!

To follow the progress of Fishkeeper Fry 2018, or to register your interest for the programme next year, please visit the dedicated webpage for the project.