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Author: Brian Krueger, PhD | Views: 1792 | Comments: 9
Last by Nikkilina on Sep 21, 2010, 7:58am
I came into lab yesterday to a disaster. I took a look at my quarantine tank and it was filled with a white bacterial bloom, the bottom of the tank was covered in what looked like leftover food and fish poop, and the water smelled like rotting fish. To top it off, the Powder Blue Tang could not right itself, and was swimming upside down and in circles. For those of you that have never owned fish, upside down and in circles is usually referred to as the "death roll." The yellow longnose butterfly fish seemed just fine though. I have absolutely no clue why there were feces and food all over the tank. I'm the only person in lab that messes with the fish and everyone knows that if they touch anything to do with the tanks without asking me, they're liable to get their hands whacked off with the guillotine paper cutter. Both fish were doing just fine when I left them on Saturday and did their daily feeding and tank cleaning. The presence of the amount of food and feces in the tank was very surprising. I do a 25% water change EVERYDAY on this tank AFTER feeding to clean up any uneaten food and feces from the night before. I'm convinced someone messed with it, because there's no other explanation. I rushed to do a massive water change. This involved making . . . More
Author: Angry Scientist | Views: 1306 | Comments: 5
Last by Angry Scientist on Jul 27, 2010, 12:10pm

Hedgehog, Forkhead, and Cheap Date are all gene names. Hedgehog is a key developmental regulator, Forkhead describes a family of proteins that all contain a Forkhead box and is important in regulating transcription, and Cheap Date is a fly gene that results in the production of flies that are acutely sensitive to alcohol.

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Author: Brian Krueger, PhD | Views: 1065 | Comments: 2
Last by Brian Krueger, PhD on Mar 17, 2011, 10:17am
Today I noticed my Tomato Clownfish acting a little friskier than usual. A few days ago I saw a white bump under the female's anal fin and thought it might be a fungal infection because it had a goofy gray tinge to it. I figured I'd just wait and see what developed. Well today I noticed that it was much bigger and longer...It was her ovipositor (egg laying tube)!! She also had a big fat round belly, so that really means only one thing. I watched her and the male clownfish do their dance and the ovipositor grew longer while the male started showing signs of arousal too. I guess a video is worth more than my explanation. I started recording after the first egg went down. It's the little orange sac in the middle of the screen. This patch grows much larger over the course of the 10 minute video. Enjoy!

Mass eggs start going down around the 2 minute mark if you don't want to watch the fish dance.

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Author: Angry Scientist | Views: 891 | Comments: 3
Last by JanedeLartigue on Oct 14, 2010, 1:24pm


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Author: Brian Krueger, PhD | Views: 1040 | Comments: 7
Last by FunkDoctorX on Aug 03, 2011, 7:27pm
A week or so ago someone forgot to close the door on our enzyme freezer tightly. I had just ordered $1,000 worth of NEB enzymes to make high throughput sequencing libraries too... Before the meltdown, I made a couple of test libraries to be sure that the protocol was worked out.


One of my test libraries with a perfect library smear. We extract the DNA in between the 200 and 300bp bands for sequencing.
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Author: Angry Scientist | Views: 824 | Comments: 2
Last by Angry Scientist on Sep 04, 2010, 6:42pm
Revenge is sweet. (This is not how science really works...)

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Author: Brian Krueger, PhD | Views: 886 | Comments: 1
Last by Dr. Girlfriend on Mar 02, 2011, 2:11pm
Things have started to calm down a bit on my weekends so I've had more time to attend to fish. One of the crappiest things about owning a saltwater fish tank is that you can't just add fish to your system immediately. The fish come from the ocean covered in parasites, so you have to take extra special care of new additions to be sure they're clear of parasites and infections before you add them to your main "display" tank. Quarantining fish is absolutely a necessary evil. A lot of people neglect to do this, but it saves a ton of headaches. Trust me on this, you would much rather lose an $80 fish than get your $3000 display tank infested with a parasite!

Anyway, the fall got clogged with trips and holidays. Some of you may remember that back in October I tried to quarantine a yellow longnose butterfly fish and a powder blue tang that both died from a nasty bacterial infection. Given that quarantining fish takes at most 2 months if they get sick, I didn't have enough time to cycle in more fish before Turkey Day! Once Christmas passed, I was working on setting up an office tank for Whitney, so my quarantine system has been occupied with her inhabitants for the past two months... Finally I was able to pick up a new butterfly fish a few weeks ago. . . . More
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