Re: [Killietalk] Killietalk Digest, Vol 51, Issue 14

["Marshall Ostrow" <jakaeditor at bellsouth_net>]

Regarding the use of acriflavine as an antifungal agent for water incubated
eggs, let me offer two warnings. I used this material extensively during my
graduate research, as I had to raise several thousand Fundulopanchax
gardneri Akure for the research project I was involved in, and I had to do
it in a very short period of time. I incubated the eggs in glass Petri
dishes and I used a very mild solution (several drops to a gallon of water)
but I kept the eggs in it for the entire 14-day incubation period. Very few
eggs fungused, but until I discovered the culprit, a consistent 5% of the
fry had two heads and lived for only a few hours. Finally I began to change
the incubation water to plain aquarium water after two days, and the
"two-headed syndrome" immediately vanished. Ever since, and that was in
1974, I have used acriflavine for only 24-48 hours on any species whose eggs
are incubated in water, and rarely have I seen any fungused eggs and never
again did I see any two-headed fry. I have a photomicrograph of one of my
two-headed fish which some day I might publish in JAKA.

The other warning is something I read somewhere recently, and I can't for
the life of me remember where I read it. This warning stated that
acriflavine can be carcinogenic if the user has too great an exposure to it.
Now I'm sure that two or three drops per gallon for two days is not going to
give you or your fish cancer, but it's just a little piece of probably
useless information that I keep stored in the back of my mind, where I keep
the plethora of other pieces of useless information!

Marshall Ostrow


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