May be a strange question - but any experience with at home bacterial culture and ID?

[Sapphoira]

Soo I've been reading all sorts of scary stuff about different illnesses in fish since one of my guys isn't feeling well and his symptoms aren't exactly fitting a any particular sickness. I came across information about TB - which I don't think it is - but that got me thinking about bacterial cultures and identifying bacteria. I know you can culture bacteria at home, but does anyone have any experience doing this with fish illnesses from bacteria? If you are testing for various bacterial infections would there be a particular catalyst or chemical that would be used for the different ones? I googled around a bit but there's kind of a disparity in information - it goes from official studies of bacteria to just little blurbs about what bacteria cultures are. I can't find anything in particular about testing for say TB.

[aokashi]

TB... you need to actually cut the fish open.....

[MSG]

Like BasementBTA mentioned the other day, unless you send it out to an actual medical laboratory, it's always a guess based on symptoms they exhibit.

Also if you're trying to culture bacteria in your house, you have to use sterile EVERYTHING. Not possible to do something like that in a house where a little dust can contaminate your culture.

It's easier to just keep the fish healthy & only treat with medication when it's absolutely necessary.

[Sapphoira]

I'm not really thinking of this as an actual solution to my fish, but more in that it would be super interesting to do in general. I'm kind of a science nerd, but this type of stuff isn't something I've really ever done that much. I know it's difficult to do bacterial cultures in the home environment, but I've heard that it can be done. Maybe I just have a picture of myself in a lab coat in my basement with beakers cooking up some agar for my cultures and cackling madly as I attempt to isolate bacteria in my tanks ;)

[MSG]

The closest I get to the mad scientist phase is when I'm doing fractional water tests with transfer pipettes. The only real problem I have with doing water tests is the little caps seem to leak some of the solution onto my hands during the agitation process.

I'm assuming you're a fan of, "Breaking Bad"?

You can try to turn your place into a home laboratory, but take pictures so you can back up your claims.

[aokashi]

I believe TB is discoverable by doing an autopsy on the fish. I think the bacteria colony is grey to the naked eye. It's found in the kidney or something. read up on it a long time ago, so don't really remember

Be careful though. that stuff is not very kind to humans either.

[LittleBettaFish]

I think there are things called granulomas that you can see without a microscope when you cut open an infected fish.

[Sapphoira]

Originally Posted by MSG

The closest I get to the mad scientist phase is when I'm doing fractional water tests with transfer pipettes. The only real problem I have with doing water tests is the little caps seem to leak some of the solution onto my hands during the agitation process.

I'm assuming you're a fan of, "Breaking Bad"?

You can try to turn your place into a home laboratory, but take pictures so you can back up your claims.

I actually have never seen breaking bad. But my home has often been used for various mad scientist things - defleshing dead animals for school, various stages of decay in hog parts for a project to eventually use a scanning electron microscope on the different decay levels after they have been shot with my .38 to show the impact of post mortem injury and ballistics.. Ok mostly dead animals. Zooarchaeology was my favorite archaeology subject in school :)

[Olympia]

Originally Posted by MSG

The closest I get to the mad scientist phase is when I'm doing fractional water tests with transfer pipettes. The only real problem I have with doing water tests is the little caps seem to leak some of the solution onto my hands during the agitation process.

I always cover the top with a tissue to stop that.

[aokashi]

Originally Posted by Sapphoira

I actually have never seen breaking bad. But my home has often been used for various mad scientist things - defleshing dead animals for school, various stages of decay in hog parts for a project to eventually use a scanning electron microscope on the different decay levels after they have been shot with my .38 to show the impact of post mortem injury and ballistics.. Ok mostly dead animals. Zooarchaeology was my favorite archaeology subject in school :)

I cant even touch dead insects. LOL