[Cnidaria] Mnemiopsis preservation

[George Mackie]

Dear Delphine, lobate ctenophores are notoriously difficult animals to fix. 
Dawydoff said they were the hardest of all. Salvatore Lo Bianco who prepared 
delicate marine animals for museum displays at Naples used copper sulphate 
either pure (5-10%) or mixed with mercuric chloride to kill lobate 
ctenophores so that they stayed together in one piece but I don't imagine 
this would preserve them well for histology (Lo Bianco, S., 1892, Mitth. 
Zool. Stat. Neapel 9, p.442). I never tried this myself.

Other pioneering authors said formaldehyde was useless and recommended 
fixing in Flemming's fluid (chrome-osmium-acetic). I played around with this 
for a bit and it seemed to work after a fashion if I left out the acetic 
acid:
1% chromic acid      7.5 ml
2% osmium tetroxide  2.0 ml
15% NaCl             2.5 ml
Adding this slowly until it was roughly 50/50 with the sea water containing 
the animal, and minimizing disturbance, neither shaking nor stirring, worked 
for me once or twice.

If you find a method which really works well, I hope you will write back to 
this newsgroup. I would like to know how to do it! George




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Delphine Thibault-Botha" <delphine.botha at univmed.fr>
To: <cnidaria at uci.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 5:58 AM
Subject: [Cnidaria] Mnemiopsis preservation


> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for a way to preserve Mnemiopsis specimen in a recognisable 
> manner? Any help will be welcome.
> Have a nice day
> Delphine
>
> -- 
> ATTENTION NEW EMAIL ADDRESS: delphine.botha at univmed.fr
>
>
> Delphine Thibault-Botha (Ph.D.)
> Laboratoire d'Océanographie et de Biogeochimie (LOB) UMR 6535 - Centre 
> d'Océanologie de Marseille Campus de Luminy - Case 901 13288 Marseille 
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