Portable Microscope for Fish Farming, Aquaculture & Aquariums

Parasites

Fish suffer from a number of parasites which cause disease. This is a particularly significant issue when there are large numbers of fish kept together, such as on salmon farms in Scotland, Ireland and Norway or tilapia farms in the USA and Far East. The farmers and vets routinely monitor the health of the fish both for the welfare of the fish and to maximise their commercial value – disease limits the growth and value of the fish.

In aquariums, ornamental fish also need to be checked for parasites – some Koi are worth tens of thousands of pounds each and the good health of the fish is greatly prized by the owners.

Microscopes

Microscopes are used to examine scrapes from the fish skin – the vet will look at the mucus and see if any harmful parasites are present, and then be able to treat the fish accordingly. These fish skin scrapes must be examined very soon after they are taken from the fish, so currently vets have to take large, heavy laboratory microscopes with them – this is inconvenient, and since these microscopes are not designed to be frequently transported, they are regularly damaged by vibration from transport and dirt from continually being disassembled and assembled.

In addition to looking for parasites, microscopes are used to monitor plankton and algae in the water – this is important to maintain correct nutrition and avoid certain toxic organisms.

The ioLight microscope is perfect for both of these tasks – it is small and light and has resolution of 1 micron which is sufficient for most fish health tasks. Furthermore the images are displayed on an iPhone or iPad so they are really easy to email to an expert for a second opinion. The ability to record video with the portable microscope is also very useful since with some parasites the way they move is important to determining if they are harmful or not.

CEFAS and Fish Vet Group

Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aqaculture Science (CEFAS) and the Fish Vet Group (part of Benchmark Holdings) have both tested the ioLight portable microscope – below are some images taken using the new wider field of view ioLight microscope (2 mm field of view). This microscope is great for fish work, including for use with the Sedgewick Rafter type counting chambers to count the numbers of plankton etc in water samples.

You can invest in the ioLight microscope at www.crowdcube.com/iolight