What do you consider a QTed ray?
- Thread starter Gr8KarmaSF
- Start date
Gr8KarmaSF;3066990; said:Again, can the average ray keeper even do this?
Is there a ray phoo test kit I dont know about?
Most vets will be able to do it, or any kind of an animal lab at a local college or university should be able to look at one for you as well.
DB junkie;3067005; said:
A lot of the wild caught rays I've brought in carried internal parasites, though they showed no signs of it on the outside. The fecal sample is the best way to tell what's happening in the inside of any given ray.
When I was building the Amazon up in MN, we decided to panacur EVERYTHING that came in from the wild, just to cover our bases.
Tapeworms could go unnoticed for a long time. I think it is best to treat as a precaution with Prazipro
I am not sure if Panacur takes care of roundworms or anything else. If it does than yes but Prazipro takes care of Flukes, Tapeworms, Flatworms and Turbellarians.
Prazi and Panacure treat different parasites. For nemotodes, panacure would be the drug to go with.
For the question about can the average hobbyist do fecal exams- if you have a microscope you could. I'm sure you could get a used one that wasn't too expensive and find pictures on the internet or pick up a good fish medicine book to help you identify what you are looking at. You should be able to learn how to tell what a nemotode looks like. You could even learn to take a skin scrape of a ray that you think has a bacterial infection, look at it under the microscope and see if your sample contains an abundance of backteria. Might be very cost effective over the long run. It might seem uninteresting to many, but think of the stuff you could learn and how much more of an expert you'd become over time! You could also get used to necropsying dead fish and getting some idea of what killed your animals. Again, you'd learn so much. There is a bit of a learning curve but we all start somewhere. In the days before most public aquariums had vet staffs, aquarists did necropsy, looked at things under the microscope, plumbed our own systems, etc and were better aquarists for it.
For the question about can the average hobbyist do fecal exams- if you have a microscope you could. I'm sure you could get a used one that wasn't too expensive and find pictures on the internet or pick up a good fish medicine book to help you identify what you are looking at. You should be able to learn how to tell what a nemotode looks like. You could even learn to take a skin scrape of a ray that you think has a bacterial infection, look at it under the microscope and see if your sample contains an abundance of backteria. Might be very cost effective over the long run. It might seem uninteresting to many, but think of the stuff you could learn and how much more of an expert you'd become over time! You could also get used to necropsying dead fish and getting some idea of what killed your animals. Again, you'd learn so much. There is a bit of a learning curve but we all start somewhere. In the days before most public aquariums had vet staffs, aquarists did necropsy, looked at things under the microscope, plumbed our own systems, etc and were better aquarists for it.
Zoodiver;3067040; said:
Sweet, anybody ever do this? Know how much they charge?
amazongirl;3067229; said:
THANK YOU!
Any idea how strong the microscope should be?
yes for other problems ive taken samples to a local university...sometimes they want a fee(max i paid was 50$ for some culture) but if you get to know the professor and it is good for the class or a particular student they welcome it and dont charge unless it cots them money.....
