All about Fish Vetting – Dr Richmond Loh
Little Nancy was in the garden filling in a hole when her neighbor peered over the fence. Interested in what the youngster was doing, he asked, “What are you up to there, Nancy?”
“My goldfish died,” replied little Nancy tearfully with- out looking up, “and I’ve just buried him.”
The neighbor laughed and said condescendingly, “That’s a really big hole for a goldfish, isn’t it?”
Little Nancy patted down the last heap of earth then replied, “That’s because he’s inside your cat.”
It makes sense when you appreciate that 70% of the earth is covered by ocean. The ocean is also a large carbon sink. Thus it is very important that we look after it.
Sometimes, it is not always possible to make a diagnosis clinically and so, lab testing may be required.
To do this, fish will need to be freshly dead and the necropsy video I have placed on youtube will help you perform the necropsy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ8HWUEQL5c&feature
The fixative I use is 10% neutral buffered formalin. If you are unable to obtain this, then less suitable alternatives include:
The volume of fish tissues to fixative should be 1:10 for best results (but 1:5 is also acceptable). When sampling larger fish specimens, tissue sizes should be >1cm thick. Gills and intestines are the first to decompose and so these tissues need to be preserved in the fixative as soon as possible.
NB: Formalin is considered to be carcinogenic. Do not inhale or contact formalin. Wear suitable personal protective equipment.
Although they don’t gave eye lids, they do sleep. Watch the your fishes in the dark and notice that most of then stay very still and in the same position in the water column by small twitches with their fins. Nocturnal fishes like clown loaches will scurry around at the bottom, looking for any left over morsels of food.
Because fish have no eyelids, it is important that the lighting period reflect what happens in nature. It also gives nocturnal fishes the opportunity to come out of cover.
As fish keepers, we may bear some of the brunt of the watchful eyes of neighbours as big water users. In my opinion, we would struggle to use as much water as those who have swimming pools or thirsty gardens with large areas of lawn. Regardless, we need to do our bit to save our most precious resource by utilising some of these water saving tips:
Dr Richmond Loh, The Fish Vet.
Recently, I attended a talk on how the Water Corporation is investing a lot of resources, trying to solve water shortage issues. But did you know that 42% of household potable water is used/wasted on gardens?
Some of the methods used include collecting and storing surface water (rain), desalination plant (harvesting freshwater from seawater) and recycling water (waste water is filtered and disinfected).
Some of the shortfalls in thse methods are summarised below:
Collecting surface water relies on rain events which may be erratic and my not always be reliable. The reservoirs are also exposed and water loss by evaporation can be high.
Desalination uses large amounts of energy to produce and the water that is returned to the sea will be more saline than normal; this will have adverse effects on the sealife.
Recycled water may not be fully safe. Chemicals and hormones may be in levels undetectable by current means, but may pose biological threats to animals including fish, amphibia and invertebrates.
Is there a simpler, quicker, more environmentally friendly solution?
Increasing water charges so that it will encourage consumers to be water wise?
Worried that water changes can cause temperature stress on fish? Try performing more regular (weekly) smaller partial eater changes (e.g. 10-15%).
Check out
http://www.stanford.edu/group/parasites/ParaSites2009/DesireeBurroughsHill_Gnathostomiasis/DesireeBurroughsHill_Gnathostomiasis.html
http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/gnathostoma/index.html
http://cmr.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/22/3/484
Dr Richmond Loh
BSc BVMS MPhil MACVSc
The Fish Vet, Perth, WA.
+61 (0)421 822 383
Veterinary medicine for fish & other aquatic creatures.
http://www.thefishvet.com.au
I have piles and piles of scientific papers to support the contrary but I don’t want to bore you with the details. A simple way to answer this is to answer it with a question.
If fish have a 3 second memory, how do they remember to come to the surface the next time they are fed?
Found an interesting article in the West Australian this morning (see attached).
Such parasitic infections can occur in humans who ingest certain poorly cooked freshwater fish. Prevention is easy by pre-freezing the fish and/or cooking fish properly. Treatment for infected humans would be by means of traditional anthelmintics combined with anti-inflammatories.