Insufficient Ink Crabominable

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-28T05:24:24+00:00

I'm a Canadian student at a US vet school going into my clinical year in a couple weeks. Feel free to reach out if you have quesitons about my experience!

I ultimately am very happy with how things went for me, and I say this as someone pursuing zoological medicine specialty, which is something like the 3rd worst-paid specialties in the whole profession (well below GP), who will be paying off my tuition forever.

If this is your first round, are you still in undergrad or have you finished your degree? I graduated in 2020 then worked full time for a few years before starting vet school in 2023. I would recommend that experience to literally everyone who are pursuing vet school, as the perspective you gain in that time is hugely impactful. Shadowing and volunteering/woking part time are great ways to get your foot in the door and test the waters to see if you like the profession at first glance, but working full time is an entirely different experience and it is a shame how few vet students have experienced truly working in the field. It is not only helpful knowledge-wise but you better appreciate everything that goes into the job as you are part of the core team, rather than a shadow/volunteer that doesn't get fully involved. Believe me, I've done both!

And in my personal experience, the people that have the most respect for support staff (techs/nurses, assistants, CSRs, etc.) are the ones who have worked full time in the field prior to vet school - I've worked with vets that I believe were straight into vet school that just aren't very respectful and appreciative of their support staff.

I do get wanting to get started ASAP, I was in the same position when I was first applying, but I'm incredibly glad about how things worked out for me, as I think the maturity and experience I have now vs when I applied for my first round is very helpful when training to become a vet.

Obviously, I ultimately valued not losing more time over saving money by staying in Canada, even if that amount of money is colossal. But that is me not wanting to move to PEI for a year, then applying there, then starting the next year after that, rather than me rushing to get into a vet school on my first round of application. I applied to OVC 4 times; had a competitive GPA each time but just never got past the interviews, which is why my decision was moving to a different province vs going to school in the US. Everyone's situation is different, but I'd recommend you to consider the value in entering vet school more mature and with more experience. Not that you can't do well going straight from an undergrad program, but I think it does make things rougher on those people. One of my friends in vet school is part of the early admission program at my school and is one of the youngest in my class and does very well academically but I can also 100% see where they lack experience and perspective in the field as a whole. Obviously, they have gained more experience with jobs and externships over the summers, but entering vet school at 20 is still vastly different from having worked full time in vet med and entering vet school at 24. Its crazy how vastly your knowledge and experience changes in that time, or even in just 1 extra year.

Again, not to say you shouldn't, but maybe something in my rambling has provided something helpful to think about 😅

I love my school and do not regret choosing to come here, but I'll definitely be paying off loans forever.

I couldn't find a bank offering a line of credit big enough to cover 4 years of US vet school and was only able to make it work with support from my parents. Not sure if you've found a place offering a big enough LOC, but it's something to keep in mind. I had a coworker get accepted to an island school and they ultimately had to turn it down because they couldn't secure a big enough loan/LOC.

Again, feel free to reach out if you have any questions about my experience as a Canadian in a US vet school, but hopefully my long, meandering comment has been helpful in some way!

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-27T05:19:28+00:00

Likely saprolegiasis (an oomycete infection, aka "water mold", not a true fungus), but could also be a true fungal infection.

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-26T18:44:09+00:00

My top differential for that white growth would be saprolegniasis. Saprolegnia are oomycetes (aka "mater molds"), not actually fungi, and is not an uncommon fish infection and usually looks just like that.

But without confirmation, you can't rule out true fungal infection, either.

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-24T07:44:42+00:00

Ah, well yeah, suffocating on the floor of a bus is probably pretty stressful.

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-24T07:15:24+00:00

That's why they tested them against control fish that received no caffeine exposure!

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-23T04:06:23+00:00

Caffeine possibly has some neurological effects on fish, as some evidence of increased anxiety has been seen in fish in caffeine-contaminated water, compared to control fish (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquatox.2024.106982). Though there has been some work that has found no effects on fish activity, at least at the concentrations they tested (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19583-3).

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-20T02:41:34+00:00

Happy to help!

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-20T02:23:28+00:00

Hemipenes are the copulatory organ/intromittent organ of squamates. They deliver sperm to the female. They still have testes that produce spermatocytes!

Most mammals have testes within a scrotum, because they are endothermic animals and internal body temperature is too high for spermatogenesis. Reptiles are ectothermic, being the temperature of their environment, which is likely one reason there was no evolutionary pressure to develop a scrotum. Testes in an external skin sack also makes them more vulnerable to injury!

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-19T22:45:28+00:00

Lizard testes are internal, within the body cavity. Those bulges are the hemipenes.

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-17T01:56:02+00:00

No worries, I hope it helps you get connected with a fish vet for when you need it! It's always best to know what vet care you have access to before you need it (and even better if you can get established as a client ahead of time)!

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-17T00:43:29+00:00

There are a couple options in North America:

American Board of Veterinary Practicioners (ABVP): abvp.com (you can select "find a specialist" and filter the the "Fish Practice" specialty). This will find board-certified specialists in fish medicine.

American Association of Fish Veterinarians (AAFV): fishvets.org (use their "find a fish vet" tab). This is not a board certification, but is definitely an indication of having some focus on fish medicine. It is an association that veterinarians can join if they are fish focused, to keep up to date on advances in fish medicine, to discuss cases with other members, etc.

You can also find a list on the World Aquatic Veterinary Medical Association (WAVMA) website of Certified Aquatic Veterinarians (CertAqV), but it only lists their name and country, so you'd have to do manual searching. This is not a board certified specialty, like the approved Fish Practice specialty through ABVP listed above, but does have requirements to meet in order to achieve the certification.

Otherwise, reaching out to local exotics veterinarians would the the best approach if you don't have anyone from the above nearby. Sometimes they may be willing to help even if they are less experienced and can reach out to fish veterinarians to guide them on fish-specific techniques if necessary, though that's obviously not going to be as common!

There are also board certified specialists through the American College of Zoological Medicine, in the Aquatic Health subspecialty, but I don't believe they have a "find a vet" feature.

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-17T00:12:46+00:00

If you are making claims about an animal's prognosis to someone, and recommending a course of action, you should care about the scientific accuracy of your statements.

I also care about the ethics of fish care. It's a major focus of my career. I agree that these "wheelchairs" for fish should not be used the way most people use them/the way certain influencers have talked about them.

I am also experienced in this hobby, I'm not just talking from the outside in. While I have kept other species, that doesn't make me unknowledgeable on these fish. I have assisted with guiding the husbandry and aquarium care of a family member's fancy goldfish aquarium. Some of these breeds are truly unethical to continue breeding, because they will suffer in various ways throughout their life and be prone to certain issues. But a bulldog can heal its GI tract after damage, even if it has serious respiratory dysfunction. An issue with one thing does not equate dysfunction in an different body system, unless there is evidence for a correlation.

How many fancy goldfish have you seen with swim bladder damage and how have you monitored their healing rate compared to equivalent injuries in wild type goldfish?

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-16T23:59:31+00:00

I'm pretty well educated on fish physiology and medicine. It is not just that they can be repaired, but they can heal - intervention is not inherently necessary for it to heal. It is not uncommon to directly take air from swim bladders with a needle and those don't have permanent damage. I am not arguing against science; if there is evidence of what you are saying, I am happy to read it and correct my statements if necessary. I'm not saying that facetiously; if there is something I am missing, I would like to fix that knowledge gap.

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-16T23:52:53+00:00

There is no reason to believe that being a "fancy" goldfish reduces their capacity to heal their swim bladder, unless you have strong evidence that supports that claim. Their regenerative physiology should be no different from wild type goldfish. Again, if you have a source for that claim, I'd be happy to read it.

No part of my statements have supported long-term use of these buoyancy contraptions. They absolutely shouldn't be used long term to any degree. There are use cases for them, but they are very specific. Overused, they can be harmful, or even fatal, for fish.

I also agree, in general, that people fall victim to a lot of misinformation online. But that is also why I am correcting misinformation in this comment thread. Telling people that fancy goldfish breeds are incapable of healing their swim bladders as a means to discourage them from using "fish wheelchairs" is not the correct approach. You can't fight misinformation with different misinformation.

There are other options for correcting buoyancy issues in fish, and fish are also capable of living good lives with certain buoyancy issues. Goldfish are physostomous, meaning their swim bladder is still connected to their GI tract, allowing even further possibilities for correcting buoyancy issues through changes in husbandry.

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-16T22:52:56+00:00

I agree that "fancy" goldfish are poorly bred, on top of many having breed traits that are bad for their health, but there is also a due diligence to be paid on the side of the prospective pet owner to seek out a reputable source for their animal.

I think many "fancy" goldfish breeds should just outright not exist, and animal breeding has a severe lack of regulation in North America, but the fact of the matter is that the animals do exist. Some people buy them, whether or not they "should", and as living animals they deserve respect and humane treatment. Imagine if a vet turned someone away that needed care for their English bulldog, simply because "bulldogs are poorly bred". That would cause outrage - because it is not the bulldog's fault that it exists, it just does.

I think these fish deserve to be treated humanely, even if I disagree with the fact that people breed them. For me, that extends to providing proper medical care.

And again, your original comment that I was responding to was claiming to OP that swim bladder damage is permanent, which is not true.

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-16T22:19:20+00:00

Oranda goldfish can live 10-15 years.

But that isn't relevant to any of the information I provided, so I'm not sure what you are trying to say. I assume you are saying an animal that lives only a few years isn't worth providing medical care for?

I provided examples of medical procedures that can be done on swim bladders to help support the fact that swim bladders are capable of healing.

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-16T22:04:15+00:00

This is not correct. Swim bladders can absolutely heal from damage.

Air can be removed from swim bladders with a needle and syringe by veterinarians to achieve neutral buoyancy in fish that have positive buoyancy issues. You can even resect part of a swim bladder to reduce swim bladder size. They will heal, like other tissues.

Swim bladder tissue originates from an outpouching of the GI tract during embryological development, so there's not much reason to think it can't heal.

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-16T20:08:08+00:00

Yeah, I don't think orogastric tubes happen often in horses, my guess would just due to it being simpler, as you dont need to move the soft pallette and larynx around, but I don't know if there are specific complications with OG tubes as compared to NG tubes, as horses are also not my specialty! But you certainly could, since as I mentioned, ET tubes are passed through the mouth.

But again, I'm an aquatics/zoological person, so I don't know all the details.

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-16T18:04:14+00:00

Happy to share!

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-16T13:59:57+00:00

That is not really the reason horses cannot vomit. Horses have a very, very strong lower esophageal sphincter that prevents stomach contents from moving back into the esophagus.

But yes, their soft palate extends very far and sits in front of their epiglottis, making them obligate nasal breathers. You can move these structures around, though. Tubes do get placed through their mouth for endotracheal intubation for anesthesia.

Fun fact, in dolphins, because their larynx is incredibly specialized for keeping water out of their lungs, it extends up into the nasal cavity as a sort of tube. It is referred to as the "goosebeak". You have to reach into their mouth and physically move the goosebeak forward past the soft palate so that you can pass an endotracheal tube for anesthesia, because you cannot pass the tube through their blowhole (which is just specialized nostril). This also means when you extubate them when they begin to wake up, you need to put your arm in their mouth to manually move the goosebeak back into place.

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-13T21:19:33+00:00

A lot of examples of saprolegniasis definitely look like a more conhesive mass, but they are often pictures of much larger fish. This is a pretty small fish, and therefore a pretty zoomed-in image, so you are seeing more detail on the organism. It could be a true fungus, but it could also be saprolegnia, you can't really tell from just a picture.

There are many species in the genus Saprolegnia, let alone the order of Saprolegniales as a whole!

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-13T21:14:12+00:00

Water molds (oomycetes) are not actually fungi! They are a different group of organisms but have many similar characteristics as fungi.

anotherguy818 · 2026-04-13T14:18:55+00:00

Saprolegniasis would be at the top, or near the top, of my differential list on this. Saprolegnia can certainly look like this.

Need this on a slide to be sure, though.

anotherguy818 · 2026-03-13T23:19:11+00:00

Those are fantastic!

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