effect of a salinity spike on 30 day old

[Mike Kacergis]

Wondering if any one would care to speculate

First:
Tuesday we increased the facility's salinity from from 1000 ms to 2000 
ms over the course of about 3 hours. This was done in an effort to 
reduce a mysterious die off of adults. Wednesday we had four tanks of 
30 day fry die. All fry were healthy during the morning feeding and 
found dead at 2:30pm. These tanks were all housed on a single shelf 
with a common water supply. Oddly enough adjacent tanks of siblings 
remain healthy. One strain was an ENU F3 and the other was an HuC 
YFP line in an albino background. Has anyone seen similar fry die offs 
associated with salinity spikes? Even after 12+ hours in the same tank 
the morts have no visible parasites (ciliated protozoans) consuming the 
carcasses. But as expected they are well on their way to autolysis.  


Second:
We are trying to formulate a broad spectrum treatment targeting 
parasites and bacteria, probably formalin-based,  tank-by-tank based 
and off system. It was suggested in house that formalin is useful as a 
broad spectrum treatment for bacteria, fungus, and parasites. Does 
anyone in the zebrafish community have any experience treating adults 
fish with formalin either as a dip or an immersion bath?  If so I'd be 
very interested in any successful applications and what concentration 
were used.  

Mike

-- 
Michael Kacergis
Laboratory of Molecular Genetics
NICHD, Building 6B, Room 315
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, MD 20892
Phone (301)-435-8263
Fax (301)-496-0243
E-mail KacergisM at mail.nih.gov