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Post by bunnie1978 on Feb 3, 2011 11:47:46 GMT -6
Well, I splurged and got a microscope! It's not one of the plastic toy ones - it's medical grade. Awesome. I've been having fun making slides of various things to look at, especially water and stuff from my tanks. I scraped off a little of the crud that collects inside the sponge filter tube and saw lots of different kinds of critters, all normal inhabitants of a tank, but it was so cool!!! I really want to get a camera that can attach to it so I can take pictures of stuff I see. That'll be later though because a good one would be in the neighborhood of $100.
I thought I would let you all know that I have one in case it might be useful to you to look at some slime or feces or water under the scope.
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Post by davet on Feb 3, 2011 14:01:24 GMT -6
That's really neat! I did a lot of that in college many years ago. It gives you insight to another world.
Dave
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Post by bunnie1978 on Feb 3, 2011 14:34:09 GMT -6
It's really awesome. I got one because of the disease issues I had last year. I now know that it was a protozoa (chilondella or something like that, maybe costia) which is actually not hard to get rid of if you start out right away with the right meds. However, there was an added complication of secondary infection of septicemia. If I had access to a microscope last year, I might not have lost half my stock and many months and hundreds of dollars trying to get back to a good healthy status. Since I never knew what it was, I was so frustrated just guessing and treating. THAT won't happen again.
Also, I was reinfected with the same thing again this year, but this time the losses were minimum - half a dozen fish - because I was prepared with meds on hand and because this particular problem is widespread with angels now, so we know how to handle it now. I was reinfected from fish I got at the Critter. It's being passed around all over the country.
If you have fish start dying for no apparent reason or if you see white hazy film on your fish, or redness at the base of fins, chances are very high you've got the same thing. It really tears up an angelfish.
What's also really great about this, if I'm proactive in examining crud out of the tank on a regular basis, I might be able to find problems before they affect the fish. Like for instance, if I examine crud from inside the filter tube and find more than a couple flukes, then I can treat or sterilize the tank before they overwhelm a fish's natural defenses.
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Post by bunnie1978 on Feb 3, 2011 14:36:56 GMT -6
Well, that being said, if any of you have a problem with a fish and would like to bring it over and do a slime scrap or any other type of examination, I'm happy to help out. I live in Hermitage. Also, my fish room is almost complete. One more stand to build and tanks to clean and move into it. Yeah!
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