[ad_1]
(Journalist)
– In February, Carol Benge of Chiefland, Florida purchased a seahorse for her home aquarium as a reward for scoring five years without cancer. She named the little black and silver fish Louie. As the coronavirus pandemic swept the country, Benge, a schoolteacher, relaxed whenever she watched the 3-inch creature float around the tank and fed it tiny brine shrimp. In September, the AP reports, Louie appeared to be having trouble swimming. He moved horizontally and looked listless. Even more disturbing were the little pearl-like bubbles on his tail. Benge had done a lot of research on seahorses and suspected he had something called gas bubble disease, similar to a human diver getting the turns off the surface too quickly. She knew she had to act quickly. “I wanted to save my girlfriend,” she says. “It eats from my hand. It’s a precious little thing.” A local vet couldn’t help. So Benge put Louie in a temporary tank and drove him to the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine.
The experts offered an experiment there, at no cost to Benge: putting Louie in a hyperbaric chamber, like a human diver suffering from bends. Benge agreed. Tatiana Weisbrod, a first year resident in Aquatic Animal Medicine, gently transferred Louie to a Pyrex glass container with water and a Benge aquatic plant brought from her home aquarium. Weisbrod and the vet team put Louie and the glass vessel in the hyperbaric chamber and sealed it. “Pressure and time are used to reduce the volume and diameter of gas bubbles in the tissue and allow them to resorb into the animal,” Weisbrod said. “Then the pressure is released in a slow and controlled manner to allow sufficient time for degassing without reformation of the bubble.” With treatment, Louie was healed. The team can now offer this treatment to professional and amateur fish owners. Louie, who Benge said was part of the family, made a full recovery and returned to hand-feed him with brine shrimp.
(Read more seahorse stories.)
[ad_2]
Source link