This will illustrate how small a volume of alcohol is needed to cause developmental changes. Prior culturing of zebrafish for 1 week is needed to obtain fertilized eggs. See the zebrafish web site for information on culturing and maintaining zebrafish for research or other labs. Also contains ideas to use zebrafish in place of other organisms in common genetics labs. One 45 minute lab period is needed for students to set up and 10-15 minutes the next day for the observations.
Ethanol is also flammable.
Ethanol and Lithium Chloride can be purchased from any chemical supply house. Make egg water by mixing 1.5 ml stock salt solution with 1 L distilled water. Ethanol treatment may cause reduced or absent development of the head. Embryos with this phenotype may not be viable. Lithium chloride may cause dorsalization, which means abnormal, excessive development of the notochord and tail.