The Fish Vet's Blog

Spring has arrived and your pond fish will be coming into season. Thought about artificial breeding so you can select the right pairs for mating? Here we demonstrate the technique for milking a fish. This same technique is used for males and females, for koi, goldfish and many other species.

Note that it’s better to fast your fish for a day to decrease to chance of contaminating your milt and eggs with faecal material. Once the milt and eggs are collected, they can be mixed and then broadcast over spawning mops.

Also, to ensure that your selected pairs come into season at the same time and to maximise fertility, hormonal induction can be used. Ask your veterinarian about these options.

To celebrate my appointment as President of the World Aquatic Veterinary Medical Association, I’d like to begin promoting the area of aquatic veterinary medicine locally.

For this month of September, any Australian or New Zealand veterinary student who LIKES my Facebook “Fin page”

and purchases either/both:

• Fish Vetting Essentials or
• Fish Vetting Medicines – Formulary of Fish Treatments

will receive complimentary student membership to WAVMA.

The books are available here:

http://thefishvet.com.au/shop/shopping.html

Important Note!

Please enter in the COMMENTS section:

• veterinary degree you will receive
• which university you are attending,
• university city,
• year of graduation, &
• which lecturers currently teach aquatics at your university.

Check out the latest pics on my Facebook "Fin Page" on the recent teaching stint I had at Murdoch University –
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.408385752543713.89724.188036301245327&type=3&l=af40e514e2

Check out the cool video at this link –

http://laughingsquid.com/insane-in-the-chromatophores-cypress-hill-played-through-squid-cells/

From Dr David Scarfe PhD, DVM, MRSSAf, Parliamentarian, WAVMA:

Please join me in congratulating the following members that will server as WAVMA Officers and Directors-at-Large on the Executive Board, from January 1-December 31, 2013. We thank all those members that cast their votes in this election, both online and during the Annual General Meeting. Those individuals new to the Executive Board will serve as advisors to the Board for the remainder of 2012.

2013 Executive Board
President Mohamed Faisal, 2013 (USA)
Immediate Past-President Dusan Palic, 2012 (Germany)
President-Elect Richmond Loh, 2014 (Australia)
Secretary Chris Walster (UK)
Treasurer Nick Saint-Erne (USA)
Director-at-Large Devon Dublin (Guyana/Japan)
Director-at-Large Lydia Brown (UK)

See what WAVMA does for the world aquatic veterinary profession by visiting the site – http://www.wavma.org/

Nothing makes a bigger fish than ‘almost being caught’!

Check out Dr William H Wildgoose’s thoughts on the subject – click on this link.

I had a client who lost their entire tank of discus to toxic when they had someone re-do their wooden floors. How could this have been prevented?

You could move your entire tank somewhere else? Re-home them? What if it’s not possible?

What I suggest (but wonder if it’d work) is to do the following:

– stop feeding fishes for 2-3 days prior tithe event to decrease the tanks’ oxygen demand.

– turn off the aerator to prevent the toxic fumes from being pumped into the tank.

– heavily plant the tank and turn the lights on for the duration to ensure oxygen supply by the plants.

– keep the filter running and also run charcoal through the system to adsorb harmful chemicals.

– seal the top of the tank with several layers of glad wrap and tape all the edges to ensure there are no gaps.

– cross your fingers that it’ll all work out well.

Any more precautionary measures you can add would be most appreciated.

Why raise such a question?

I was watching an episode of “Tanked” (Animal Planet Discovery Show) and there was a pop-quiz that I hate to admit it, but I got wrong…. well… according to them anyway.

The question was… which of these fish do not have a stomach?…. The answer they gave was Goldfish. And so it was proposed that goldfish need very much more regular feeding than twice a day.

Whether a goldfish has a stomach has been a subject for debate on may fish forums on the net – just Google “tanked tv show goldfish stomach” and you’ll see.

In animals, the stomach is located between the oesophagus and the duodenum (the most anterior part of the small intestine).

Many texts and scientists (and the producers of “Tanked”) believe that goldfish do not have a stomach. In a reply by Dr Brian Jones, he pulled out this excerpt:

About 15% of teleosts, including cyprinids, have no stomach and no region of low pH or pre-digestion. Anterior portion of intestine has some storage function, intestine in these species is usually very long compared to, say, a trout (Rombout, et al. 2011. Teleost intestinal immunology. Fish and shellfish immunology 31:616-626.).

I looked up Balliere’s Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary for the definition of stomach and this is what I found – the curved, muscular, saclike structure that is an enlargement of the alimentary canal between the oesophagus and the small intestine.

Then I carefully dissected the carcass of a formalin-fixed goldfish I had spare on my shelf (as you do) to see whether the goldfish has a stomach. I found that there was certainly a saclike distension to the anterior part of the alimentary tract, immediately caudal to the oesophagus.

So what would you call the dilated portion of the gut immediately posterior to the oesophagus in the goldfish?

In birds, you have a crop, a proventriculus (the secretory stomach) and a gizzard (the muscular stomach) between the oesophagus and duodenum.

Ruminants are known to have 4 stomachs, they have the rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum between the oesophagus and duodenum.

In an alpaca, you have compartments 1, 2 and 3 between the oesophagus and duodenum.

So, if you do not call the structure (arrow) in the diagram a stomach, what would you call it?

“Intestinal bulb” was proposed.

I may have to accept defeat on a technicality….

I open it up to you now for debate…

For those interested in aquatic biosecurity, a great read here.

The potential of waste items in aquatic environments to act as fomites for viral haemorrhagic septicaemia virus:

Find the article at this link – http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2761.2011.01323.x/pdf