How Do You Preserve Bichirs?

[Josh's Fish]

I get a lot of specimens donated to me from shops and other hobbyists as I like to preserve and display them. This method only works with armoured fish, such as Polypterids, Gars and Bowfin.

The reason why I do this is because I get to find out how a fish has died, I learn about their anatomy and they make great displays for a fish someone has been raising for a long time with personal attachment or if they just think they're visually appealing.

During dissection of some specimens, I've found some interesting causes of death; gravel lodged throughout their digestive tract, sand compacted in their stomach, swollen pellets and oily coatings lining the inside of their lungs which had suffocated them. (from feeding oily foods which slick the water surface)

For an in-depth How To, please watch this video

Toothpick holding the mouth open of a specimen just after boiling.


Conicle tooth patches of a P. mokelembembe. (below)




One of the smaller mounts (below)





(below) The P. bichir lapradei which was the first to successfully breed in the UK. She bred with a P. ornatipinnis.
Sadly she died from a speculated infection and oil-lined lines.

JT-AQUARIUN had this picture of her tattooed!




The idea for these mounts were inspired by King-El's. I'm still practicing to get the quality of mine on par with his haha.

If you've preserved any specimens, post below! I'd love to know your methods
(I have some wet specimens and other mounted ones, I'll post below once I've taken some more pictures)

 

[jaws7777]

Speechless....these threads areamazing

 

[Polyaddict86]

Another awesome post

 

[Grinch]

If you want to preserve the fish (small or large) for later dissection, and don't care about tissue damage at the cellular level, a freezer is fine. I've preserved fish that were later added to museum collections (i.e. subsequently preserved in a fixative) in this way for >2 years in a standard home freezer.

I don't have any experience with preservation methods for dry mount, but I do have some experience with wet mount. For wet mount, you could probably preserve small specimens at home using high-proof alcohol as a fixative (e.g. everclear). I've never tried to preserve a small bichir using alcohol... you might have to use a series of increasing concentrations to avoid distortion of the specimen.

Alcohol won't work for larger fish... the methods for larger fish probably are not suitable for hobbyists anyway. Alcohol is not the best long term storage solution/fixative, but is the probably the best fixative readily available to hobbyists.

 

[Josh's Fish]

If you want to preserve the fish (small or large) for later dissection, and don't care about tissue damage at the cellular level, a freezer is fine. I've preserved fish that were later added to museum collections (i.e. subsequently preserved in a fixative) in this way for >2 years in a standard home freezer.

I don't have any experience with preservation methods for dry mount, but I do have some experience with wet mount. For wet mount, you could probably preserve small specimens at home using high-proof alcohol as a fixative (e.g. everclear). I've never tried to preserve a small bichir using alcohol... you might have to use a series of increasing concentrations to avoid distortion of the specimen.

Alcohol won't work for larger fish... the methods for larger fish probably are not suitable for hobbyists anyway. Alcohol is not the best long term storage solution/fixative, but is the probably the best fixative readily available to hobbyists.

Haha, I still have fish in the freezer from 3 years ago waiting to be preserved.
For wet specimens, I've found 70% denatured alcohol such as Isopropyl works great, large and small fish. Large specimens, you need to inject the preservative, I injected around 6ml every inch. I'd prefer to use formaldehyde next time though as it doesn't need replacing as often. I have not seen any distortions as of yet, I have a juvenile Lap x Ornate hybrid preserved only a few mm in length, I'll get some macro photos and see what it looks like now.

 

[Grinch]

Haha, I still have fish in the freezer from 3 years ago waiting to be preserved.
For wet specimens, I've found 70% denatured alcohol such as Isopropyl works great, large and small fish. Large specimens, you need to inject the preservative, I injected around 6ml every inch. I'd prefer to use formaldehyde next time though as it doesn't need replacing as often. I have not seen any distortions as of yet, I have a juvenile Lap x Ornate hybrid preserved only a few mm in length, I'll get some macro photos and see what it looks like now.

Yes, IPA would be even better... I forgot this is at the pharmacy! This would last longer than the booze for human consumption, but still not as good as formalin, formaldehyde, or some other fixative agent. I've used 90% IPA for preserving small organisms in a concentrated sample... the idea being that once you add the 90% to whatever water is in the sample/organism you'll get something closer to 70% in the final product and it will therefore store better without having to go back and swap out fluids to bring the concentration up.

For large specimens for museum collections they'll typically partially (and coarsely) dissect the fish just to open up surface area for the fixative... injection would work fine if you don't care what you are hitting with the needle and it's not a big deal if you miss a spot.

Edit: the issue with the big fish is that they can start to rot from the inside before the fixative has a chance to preserve the tissue.

 

[jaws7777]

Im gonna try this. Have a del in the freezer

 

[Grinch]

If you want to REALLY up your preservation game, someone could try to "clear and stain" a small/young poly. In this process the soft tissue is rendered transparent, cartilage is blue, and bone is pink. Bichir-girl tells me she's seen people try to do this to a poly ~8" and it didn't work... it was all pink (all bone). It might work on a very small/young poly because the bone might not have fully calcified yet.

Here is an example of a cleared and stained ray (not my picture):

Here are instructions.

Another interesting option, and probably more feasible for a hobbyist, would be to get a dermestid bettle colony and used it to skeletonize the fish. This would then set you up to do whole-skeleton mounts, much like this mount of a lung fish (again, not my picture):

 

[clm08k]

OTp1144 also had a cool thread about preserving an endli!
https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/...mount-dead-fish-pictures.682099/#post-7675413

 

[Josh's Fish]

A little more depth on the types of tooth patches in P. mokelembembe.