9 MICROSCOPY – Sampling

   2020-04-02  Posted in Microscopy

9) MICROSCOPY – Collecting a Sample

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Sample collection is simply the “scraping” of slime off of the body, fin or gill of the fish you’re assessing. You need a glob of mucus that’s big enough to see, but not so big you can’t see THROUGH it.

Start to Finish, Set up, Practice Slide, Adjustment and Biopsy

This is where I discover that the LCD autocorrects for the amount of light you get through the disc diaphragm. In other words, it’s hard to mess up. Unless you have the ABOVE stage light on. Something to understand is that these videos are unretouched. Not fancy. I’m not making money from these videos so I am not going to sit around and edit out some of the long spaces for free. I’m old. I want to get the most out of my days, not edit a video so it’s as flashy as a 28 year old with 1M Youtube subscribers where you HAVE to be flashy and professional to maintain viewership.

A Different Way To Scrape Skin

Using the SLIDE to collect the sample of mucus, then putting your drop of water on the end of the slide, and laying your coverslip on the bleb of mucus.

 

A Good Food To Make Your Medicated Food On. 

Making Medicated Food
If you're going to make a medicated food using the following tutorial [Making Medicated Food] I recommend you build the food on the pellet at right because it is specifically engineered to bolster the immune response in fish under attack. It's very palatable and holds up well in the process. I've used this food to make the medicated food shown in the tutorial. 
I suspect any food would be okay, but I don't know that the other foods would still float after treatment.

BlueRidge Probiotic
This particular food is made with hyper supplemented levels of vitamin C and some nucleotides that have been shown to bolster the immune response.

Author: Dr. Erik Johnson
Dr Erik Johnson is a Marietta, Georgia Veterinarian with a practice in small animal medicine. He graduated from University of Georgia with his Doctorate in 1991. Dr Johnson is the author of several texts on Koi and Pond Fish Health and Disease as well as numerous articles on dog and cat health topics.