Project updates: I had a really hard time keeping my chronic exposure fish alive during the last go round.

Although I started with 50-60 fish per treatment group, in some cases 59 fish in a group died, leaving me with only one sample in two of the treatment groups. We think this was due to trouble with swim bladder inflation and feeding. After some brainstorming, I’ve decided that the next go around we are going to try to “teach” them how to swim by slowly water volume per scintillation vial to get them used to swimming around in more water.
After some unsuccessful breeding attempts, I started qPCR. For the past few weeks I have been running primers, ordering new primers (inspired by new literature I have found) and writing as much of my paper as possible.
This week I started a new chronic exposure experiment with the same treatment groups as before. Now that the fish are bigger and the clutches look better, I was able to use 150 embryos per treatment group. My hope is that this will help us reach a higher survival rate at the end of the next two weeks.
This weekend I will be taking care of my fish, running more qPCR with my new primers and making my poster for the National Society of Toxicology meeting. After the Tox meeting, I’ll have a few more days and then hopefully a full first draft of my thesis!