A Method for Making Artificial Fish Eggs

Abstract

A method of making artificial fish eggs ("geleggs") is described. Dyed gelatin droplets drip into cold organic solvent where they solidify as spheres; the spheres are then treated with a cross-linking compound. The result is a durable and easily stored imitation of pelagic or semipelagic fish eggs for use in egg drift and distribution studies.

How to Obtain Artificial Brown Trout (Salmo trutta L.) eggs

“…The use of real eggs was unsatisfactory for two reasons, firstly this would limit the experiments to times of the year when eggs were available and secondly, the eggs could not be individually coded. A method has been described for making fish eggs from gelatin (Stira & Reed, 1976). The method was rejected because it required substantial laboratory facilities, the eggs deteriorate with time and only batch colour coding was possible.The mean and 95% confidence limits of the diameter (0.453 ± 0.005 mm) and specific gravity (1.069 + 0.038) of water-hardened trout eggs was measured.…”