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New Driftless Center aquarium lets visitors ‘look at the underside of the Mississippi River’
Aquarium to be filled with native fish and possibly invasive species
Erin Jordan
Apr. 7, 2023 6:00 am, Updated: Apr. 7, 2023 9:13 am
LANSING — Through the picture windows of The Driftless Center in Lansing, visitors can look out over the Mississippi River.
Now, with a 16-foot-long, 1,250-gallon aquarium filled with local fish species, including bass, bluegill and northern pike, it will be like guests can look below the waters, too.
“There are 125 different species of fish in the Mississippi River,” said Ross Geerdes, director of The Driftless Area Education and Visitor Center. “We can’t have all of them, but we’d like to have a dozen or maybe more. People want to look at the underside of the Mississippi River.”
Workers from Under the Sea, an Oklahoma company that builds custom aquariums for customers including Bass Pro Shop and Cabela’s, installed the new aquarium March 29 in the basement of The Driftless Center.
Once the weather warms up, staff from Allamakee County Conservation and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources will go out on the river and catch the fish that will inhabit the new aquarium, Geerdes said.
The county bought the aquarium with nearly $85,000 in donations to celebrate The Driftless Center’s fifth anniversary.
Since the center opened in August 2017, it has hosted nearly 76,000 visitors, including people from all 50 states and 53 countries, Geerdes said. The 10,000-square-foot center is the hub of the Allamakee County Conservation Board and holds staff offices, but it also draws school and community groups from Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
If you go
Where: The Driftless Area Education and Visitor Center, 1944 Columbus Road, Lansing
Hours: 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday-Friday; noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Closed major holidays, including this Friday, Saturday and Sunday because of the Easter holiday.
Admission: Free.
More information: allamakeecountyconservation.org/driftless-center
On a recent Friday, local visitors mixed with a junior high field trip from Chicago.
“We had 60 people in here,” Geerdes said. “It all worked out.”
Geerdes, who was the center’s naturalist before transitioning to the director position this spring when Jim Janett retired, said staff match programming to the group visiting the center.
“If they are younger people, we get animals out,” he said. The center has seven kinds of snakes, reptiles and amphibians.
“If they are older and studying about glaciation, we’ll talk about The Driftless Area and why it’s so special,” he said.
The Driftless Area, a topographical region in southwestern Wisconsin, southeastern Minnesota, northeastern Iowa and the extreme northwest corner of Illinois, was never covered by glaciers during the last ice age and doesn’t have the silt, gravel and rock — called drift — the glaciers left behind.
The Driftless has a more rugged landscape than the rest of Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota with caves, sinkholes, springs and cold streams ideal for trout fishing.
Education about the Mississippi River is core to the center’s mission, Geerdes said. One of the challenges facing the river is invasive fish and plant species that threaten native species.
“With the expansion of Asian carp in northern part of the river it’s very important to have those species in the aquarium as well,” he said. “I think it’s a wonderful idea to display those and educate people about the negative impacts they have on the environment.”
While the carp can outcompete native species for food in the river, staff will be feeding fish in the aquarium minnows, worms and waxworms from River N Ridge Outdoors in Lansing. “They (carp) wouldn’t be that detrimental in our aquarium because we’re feeding them,” Geerdes said.
Staff will keep the aquarium about 60 degrees year-round and change the filter every couple of weeks. They will start with young fish to allow them time to grow in the tank, which is equipped with faux rocks and plants that mimic the Mississippi River.
Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com