chinese tilapia under the microscope

crystals formed after a few days

So I took another field trip to the international grocery store to look for new things to look at under the microscope. The store claims this tilapia is from China, though I really have no way of knowing for sure. The label didn’t have any information about the processing or packaging of the meat. I don’t think the store has much incentive to lie since most people probably aren’t keen on buying fish specifically from China, of all places. But who knows. And for this post, let’s just assume it’s really from China.

I first bought and looked at this fish on Monday earlier this week. I let it thaw a bit and removed a tiny piece of flesh with sterilized tweezers and pressed it between two slides to get some liquid for a sample. Which is probably not the most efficient or scientific way of going about it, but it was as much effort as I was willing to put into it for now.

Within an hour of putting the sample on the slide I saw a few ribbons here and there and what seemed, to me at least, to be strange patterns of the liquid distributed across the slide. Although I have no reference for what a “normal” distribution of fish flesh juice would look like, and so I’m just going off a gut feeling. But to my eyes at least, there seemed to be more lines and straight edges than one might expect.

When I looked again the next day, about 24 hours later, I noticed thin metallic rod shapes starting to form.

I’m definitely at a point in my research where I need more training, and I feel like I need to make the decision of whether to pursue formal training and take this research to a new level, or just keep it at the casual and non-formal pace I’m doing it at now. But from my basic knowledge of biology, the first thing that came to mind when I saw these shapes are the rod-shaped bacteria called bacilli. For reference, here’s a screenshot of bacilli under a microscope from Google search:

I think it’s pretty safe to say that the metallic rods I’m seeing in the fish aren’t bacilli or any other form of bacteria. I’m pretty sure this isn’t uric acid either, since uric acid crystals tend to be more irregular in shape, thicker in the middle, and taper like needles at the ends. But of course I’m always wanting the opinion of my readers who have a background in or profession relevant to what we’re looking at. Maybe someone can identify these rods.

I also noticed the first evidence of hydrogel on Tuesday that wasn’t visible the day before. Evidence of hydrogel almost always shows up on the edges of the slide and has a frosted glass look, like how frost on a windshield in winter looks.

I then let the slide sit idle for a few days and didn’t have another look until today, Friday. By now, there are dramatic crystal patterns beginning to develop. These are quite different from the other crystal formations I’ve seen in my own samples so far, but I think I’ve seen quite similar patterns in research from Ana Mihalcea and others. I can’t remember at the moment where I saw similar patterns, but I think it may have been dental anesthetics that Dr. Mihalcea looked at. They have a branching and almost fractal quality.

I’ve definitely also got some limitations with my equipment. I really only use the 4x and 10x objectives because anything higher doesn’t yield that much more detail. And below I wasn’t able to get a clear image from the 40x at all.

I’m finally noticing that I tend to save the best for last with these posts. Here is some pretty clear and closeup footage of the structure of these crystal-fractal-rods up close.

Pretty spooky, isn’t it?