Fish Laboratory Gear

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Fish Laboratory Gear

If you’re thinking about putting together a laboratory for your fish collection or even for your business, you will appreciate this page. I’ll go through the essential pieces of the lab and find you the best prices on decent gear.

Then I’ll link out to the top pages that explain in more detail what and how you’ll be using this stuff.

Let’s say you were gonna set up a lab at your business, or for yourself, or your local Koi club was going to equip a volunteer health-assessment unit. The following would be the basics of a lab.

Laboratory Gear

A Microscope
I am very preferential to the Celestron LCD Screen microscope. I have an use one. I met this scope in a wet lab and a participant brought it in. Loved it. 
It's of "decent" quality and I'm going to do a step-by-step video tutorial on how to use this very microscope. 

Slides
These are made with glass. The kit at left has the slides AND the coverslips in a kit for under ten bucks. The coverslips, however are glass. I prefer glass coverslips. But the beginner should probably start with plastic. 

Coverslips
Can be glass or plastic. Some people have used one slide as a 'coverslip' for the regular slide. This gives extremely inaccurate results, you will NOT find costia and that's NOT because it's not there lol. 

Dissection kit
You shouldn't spend a ton on a dissection kit, but it will come in handy for biopsies, for killing a fish after you anesthetize it for biopsies, and even for minor surgeries if you're so inclined. I'm not "all about" laypersons 'doing surgery' on a fish, but I *do* think that if a fish has an eyeball 'freeballin' it" in the water that ANYONE who trims off / out the damaged globe is doing a humane thing if the fish is anesthetized. 

Oil of Cloves
Can be of immense utility in euthanising a fish, in sedating it for handling, in surgery. Dosing is available on drjohnson.com. Oil of Cloves can be cut with ethanol making it VERY easy to use. 

Dosing Syringes
These are great for measuring out your formalin/malachite and dosing it. Also for administering certain medications. You may need a prescription for these in a few states before Amazon will ship them. Many states, NOT. 

Practice Slides
It's hard to tune up a microscope with moving targets and unstained preps. If your scope was broken you might not even know it, so I recommend having "known" easy-to-read slides to practice on. Once you can get a crisp image of these, you can perform a decent biopsy. 

Water Testing Gear
It's the key to fish keeping, and the centerpiece of your lab because MOST fish health problems will come from water quality defects, or failure to quarantine.