Category Archives: Microscopy

Step by step “how to use a microscope” focusing on an LCD based microscope of good quality.

Microscopy

19 MICROSCOPY – Trichodina

19) MICROSCOPY – Trichodina

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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.

Microscopy

20 MICROSCOPY – Miscellany

20) MICROSCOPY – Miscellany I Forgot To Put Elsewhere

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The following is a long boring 5 minute video of me collecting video of a fluke to show how “in depth” and with what detail the Celestron can capture video. You will see the video of me, looking and then  below that there’ll be the recording made by the microscope.

Microscopy

15 MICROSCOPY – Flukes

15) MICROSCOPY – The Flukes

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There are gill and body flukes. Flukes that lay eggs and flukes that have live young. Flukes that have eye spots and flukes that do not. One fluke type is Gyrodactylus, and the other is Dactylogyrus. Clear as mud?

“STRETCHY WORMS”.

 

Learning The Flukes 

Gill Fluke

Body Fluke

Has Eyes

Has NO Eyes

Lays Eggs

Live Young

Called: Dactylogyrus

Called: Gyrodactylus

Lives on the body and gills just fine.

Lives on the body and gills just fine.

The only RELEVANT point to knowing the difference is because EGGS can sustain an infestation by eluding your treatment. In other words, you're blasting the adults and swimmers, but the eggs are safe. For the most part. Some say that potassium permanganate can even kills eggs but I highly doubt it. 
So I treat ALL fluke infestations as if they're egg-layers and make sure to treat in 3-4 days after the last treatment in 78 degree water, or up to 7 days after the last dose in water under 70 DF.  That last treatment is intended to kill any flukes that hatched since the last treatment but BEFORE they can lay eggs again. 
Great treatments for Flukes are numerous. In systems up to maybe a thousand gallons my favorite is PraziPro because Hikari "nailed it" with that formulation. 

Microscopy

13 MICROSCOPY – Intestines

13) MICROSCOPY – Worms and Intestines

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This is a terminal event for the subject fish, but you can remove a piece of intestine and express the contents onto a slide, apply a drop of water (not as big as they do in this video LOL) but a drop of water on a little LESS material and then you may see eggs in the material from the intestine.

 

 

Microscopy

11 MICROSCOPY – Gill Biopsy

11) MICROSCOPY – Gill Biopsy

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This is just a really good microscope.

So I collect a biopsy from the gills of a Sarassa Comet. My hand is in the way on one. The gills are pale in this box of fish, they are infested with flukes. The wholesaler complains that these flukes show resistance to medications. The flukes are body flukes, liverbearers, Gyrodactylus species. All I find in this group   for biopsy is nothing but Flukes.