The Fish Vet's Blog

I had a flurry of questions about the blood testing. The most common one was, what is the minimum amount of blood we need in order to run a full biochemistry panel?

The minimum amount of blood we need is 0.5mL. Blood collection tubes come in all sizes and I’ve included a picture of the common sizes used (from left to right, 10mL, 5mL, 2mL and 1mL). The amount of anticoagulant to blood ratio shouldn’t be too much of a problem if running a biochemistry panel. It is only an issue if you’re wanting haematology since excess anticoagulant can rupture your cells, and too little will lead to a clotted blood sample. Of course there are a heap of other complications, but I’d best leave that to a specialist clinical pathologist to answer.

In a race, what would you say to cheer a fish on?

GO! Rami!
(gourami)

Read more
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/130109-shark-embryo-freeze-predator-animals-science

http://smithsonianscience.org/2013/01/first-detailed-sex-video-of-deep-sea-squid-penetrates-long-standing-mysteries-as-to-how-these-animals-mate/

This course is taught byDr. Donald Lightner and his colleagues from the Aquaculture Pathology Laboratory at the University of Arizona.  This intensive course consists of comprehensive lectures and practical laboratory training that is focused on current methods used to diagnose, prevent, and treat the principal diseases of cultured penaeid shrimp. This program also provides an excellent opportunity for participants to meet and interact with others involved in shrimp disease research and management.

More information available at
http://microvet.arizona.edu/research/aquapath/index.htm

This information brought to my attention from WAVMA’s email list-serve.

The question I received on email today:

I had someone ask me the other day about Siamese Fighting Fish, and the best way that they should be housed. It basically stemmed from the fact that this person had seen at a local petshop a fishtank filled with different kinds of fish, also containing 3 very small transparent boxes each with a Fighting fish in it. She was concerned that this was poor animal welfare for the fish. So, I was just wondering what sized tanks Fighting Fish need, whether they need to be housed alone/just away from other Fighting Fish/ or can be housed in sight of other Fighting Fish.

My response:

Siamese fighters are adapted to surviving in small puddles seasonally (when the water bodies dry up) and would prefer larger bodies of water to live in. As their name suggests, they are from the tropics (Siam is old for Thailand) and so they ought to be kept in water at a temperature of around 24degC. This can be maintained either with a heater in the water, a heated pad beneath the tank or by warming up the room.

There’s a great article written by my colleague on this issue in koi fish on page 16 of this newsletter –

http://www.wavma.org/media/Documents-for-download/AVN-2011-5(2).pdf

I suspect this research paper (link to the paper) had its roots in ornamental freshwater fish breeding since the culture methods for vinegar eels is in virtually every fish breeding text that’s out there. When I was younger, I often wondered what are these vinegar eels? Where do they come from? Do they just materialised out of thin air? Just some apple cider vinegar or oatmeal and you get microworms or vinegar eels.

This comment was by Wadim Kapulkin on my Facebook Fanpage. He has great insight and thought I’d share it on my other social media platforms. Thanks Wadim!

facebook Wadim Kapulkin commented on The Fish Vet‘s link. Wadim wrote: "Live feeds are essential in larval nutrition of many fish and crustacean species. As the consumers’ demand for aquaculture products is growing rapidly, the demand for live feeds in larviculture is increasing as well. To satisfy the growing demand, research has taken steps to develop new innovative live feeds. Several studies focused on nematodes as a potential food source for larvae. Production methods, culture media, harvest, and enrichment procedures for nematodes presented in these studies are reviewed here. Many studies fed nematodes to different species of fish and crustaceans to test applicability in larval nutrition. The results of these feeding trials in terms of larval performance as well as ingestion and digestion of nematodes in the larvae’s gut are reviewed here as well. In addition, a summary of advantages and disadvantages of nematodes as live food and an outlook on future challenges of production and application of nematodes in larviculture are also presented. In summary, several different production methods including innovative culture media for nematodes have been developed. The species Panagrellus redivivus has been used in most of the reviewed studies. It reproduces extremely fast and can be cultivated by very simple means of production. Other species such as Turbatrix aceti and Caenorhabditis elegans have been tested in a few studies as well. However, a complete production cycle for mass production appropriate for use in aquaculture has not been developed yet for any of these species. Enrichment trials for amino acids revealed only a very limited potential to manipulate amino acid profiles in nematodes. In contrast, fatty acid composition turned out to be quite variable depending on the culture media used for nematode production. By adding oils containing large quantities of essential fatty acids to the culture media, these fatty acids could be enriched in nematodes and provided to larvae. This allows tailoring fatty acid composition according to the needs of the respective larvae. It could be shown that nematodes can be digested by fish larvae even though they possess a robust cuticle. Larval performance depends strongly on the respective species of fish to which the nematodes are fed. Nematodes seemed to work particularly well for crustacean larvae. In penaeid larvae, nematodes turned out to be a good live food that can compete with conventional feeding methods even though there is still room for improvements. For future use in larviculture, appropriate methods for mass production, harvest, and feeding need to be developed. Additionally, more data on optimized feeding levels for different fish and crustacean species will be required." —

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Yours sincerely,

Dr Richmond Loh
BSc, BVMS, MPhil (Vet Path), MANZCVS (Aquatics), MANZCVS (Pathobiology), DipPM.
Veterinarian | Adjunct Senior Lecturer Murdoch University | WAVMA President-Elect |
Secretary Aquatic Animal Health Chapter – Australian and New Zealand College of Veterinary Scientists (ANZCVS)
The Fish Vet, Perth, Western Australia, AUSTRALIA. Mobile Veterinary Medical & Diagnostic Services for fish and other aquatic creatures.
http://www.thefishvet.com.au
Ph: +61 (0)421 822 383