Preservation Techniques - Wet Specimens

[CaptainBarnicles]

I'm afraid so. This thread has me wondering because I also had pickled these Kuhli loaches, as I was excited that they spawned but never got any young.
View attachment 148140

your missus is going to have a field day when she eventually comes across it...

 

[itiwhetu]

your missus is going to have a field day when she eventually comes across it...

Yep kind of ugly really. Hopefully I will be off this planet, and I don't have to face the music.

 

[Deleted member 149562]

Yep kind of ugly really. Hopefully I will be off this planet, and I don't have to face the music.

If the wife does find it....you should be very suspicious of any sandwich that has fish in tomato sauce in it

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

If the wife does find it....you should be very suspicious of any sandwich that has fish in tomato sauce in it

....wait...

 

[PlasticGalaxy]

I worry about you dude....




Welcome back by the way

Thank you! And I suppose concern is better than ignorance lol.

Your moults will not have deteriorated because they are simple chitin.
Whilst alcohol will serve for a time, you will, in effect, create a fermentation and get fish wine!

Fish wine...

For proper preservation, you need to 'fix' the corpse and to do this, you'll need to make up a formalin solution, using 10% Formaldehyde and 90% water.
You'd leave the body pickling for 3 days, unless it's bigger then 10cm, in which case a week is required.
Note that for bigger bodies, you need to create a slice into the body cavity to ensure the formalin penetrates the whole body, or rot will occur later. Technicians would normally inject the formalin into the body cavities.
Once the body has been pickled, you need to sit it in water and change this water every two or three days, to carefully rinse out the formalin.
When this is done, you can then move the corpse to ethyl alcohol for long-term preservation.

NOTE that formalin is very nasty stuff and needs to be disposed of responsibly and not just poured down a sink! Your local pharmacist may be able to assist you with this.

All sounds very technical! I've been looking into taxidermy recently so I'm sure that learning all the ins-and-outs and different techniques would do me some good! How do you know all of that stuff? Enjoy some fish pickling yourself, hm?

What about epoxy? I think that would likely work.

I was considering that, I was wondering if it would destroy organic material though. I have a few moth pupae that I wanted to encase in resin, but got too confused with the quantities and parts A and B so... I gave up haha.

How about using resin?

Doesn't lose any vibrancy of colour and is pretty easy to do

Obviously larger moulds would be needed for fish but the principle would be the same....along the lines of animals and insects caught in amber, using resin would keep them preserved and in full colour without any nasty whiffs.

Ah, the colour was definitely a fear of mine actually. I've got a gorgeous red tail shark, tail fin's a great vermillion right now and eventually I'd like to preserve him (I'd like to keep all of my "big" fish), so maybe resin would be a good idea after all.

This all sounds too complicated....why don't you just phone Darth Vader and ask him for some carbonite and freeze your plec in that? Then you could turn it into a bottle opener like this..

Would be quite a big bottle opener! But that does open me up to making a mould of some sort and pouring in plaster or metal or the like, so I'll keep that in mind hahaha

If you use formaldehyde to pickle something, it destroys the DNA.
You can use Alcohol to preserve things and it doesn't destroy the DNA.

I'm pretty sure they used 25% alcohol and 75% distilled water to pickle fish. Put the fish in the solution for 24 hours and then take it out and put it in a new solution (same percentages). The fish 24 hour soak kills stuff on and in the fish and usually turns the eyes white. The second solution is the one the fish remains in.

The container must be air tight and they usually top up or replace the solution every few years.

This is all very interesting! Probably an obvious question, but what happens when DNA is destroyed?

I know people that have preserved fish in plastic resin. The fish needs to be sterilised first by soaking in alcohol or formaldehyde.

A few people I knew used hair spray on dead crustaceans and the shells of crustaceans. They pickled the shell, let it dry, then set it on a block of wood. When it was in the correct position, they spray it with hair spray. They let it dry and added more coats. After about 10 coats of hair spray they let it dry for 24 hours and put it on their shelf.

Wow! No stink or anything? Would like a wall of shrimp lol.

one of the young guys on the forum, does taxidermy and has preserved fish. One of his threads is below. Caution, it's a bit gory.

My hobby...

Please note that no animals have been harmed; they have all died from natural causes. Some people may find the images upsetting; if you are likely to be distressed, please do not read any further. Members are cautioned that abusive comments made to Barry Tetra or about taxidermy practices in...

www.fishforums.net

Taxidermy would be my second option, I've heard fish are harder to preserve than mammals though, but if I get the chance then I'll try anything. Same with birds, apparently.

 

[Colin_T]

Probably an obvious question, but what happens when DNA is destroyed?

you can't clone it so no making new fishies in the future.

 

[PlasticGalaxy]

you can't clone it so no making new fishies in the future.

Aww, shucks. Think those pet cloning businesses would clone a plec for you?

 

[Colin_T]

Aww, shucks. Think those pet cloning businesses would clone a plec for you?

if you pay them enough they would, but i don't have a spare 10 million for a fish

 

[Bruce Leyland-Jones]

If you use formaldehyde to pickle something, it destroys the DNA.
You can use Alcohol to preserve things and it doesn't destroy the DNA.

If DNA was required, samples would be taken before the embalming.
Alcohol won't destroy the DNA and there's lots of other stuff it wouldn't destroy immediately, either.
When formalin is used to 'fix' the body, that's exactly what it does.

All sounds very technical! I've been looking into taxidermy recently so I'm sure that learning all the ins-and-outs and different techniques would do me some good! How do you know all of that stuff? Enjoy some fish pickling yourself, hm?

To do it right, rather than an amateurish bodge-job, it IS a technical process. This was just one of those lab skills I had to acquire to get my Masters.
One of my buds got so into it, he quit and went into the funeral business!