Ally, Entry #4, Excessive Test Tube Washing

This week has been pretty routine.  During the mornings, we work on extracting FA, or dissecting crabs, something along those lines.  During the afternoon, Steph and I clean out the crabs' tanks.  It's a pretty nasty process, and usually we have Mario or Mike to help.  It's definitely at least a two person job, better with three.

I generally take the food the crabs didn't eat out of their individual tanks before they get a water change to make cleanup easier.  Steph and Mario or whoever is helping out drains the water from the tanks and put the crabs in a separate container while they rinse out the container and scrub the sides.  The crabs are uber aggressive and I'm very easily startled.  I mean I yelp whenever they snap at me.  Or when someone walks up behind me and surprise me.

The room smells like clams all the time, and I swear if I never see another clam again it'll be way too soon.  Every time I smell clams I get the war flashbacks of cutting them up.

Mrs. Terhaar visited on Monday and confirmed by beliefs that our test tube washing process seems excessive.  The test tubes are soaked in soap and water, then scrubbed with a wand for at least ten seconds.  The tube is rinsed out with tap water 8-10 times, or more if there's still soap in it.  Then the tube is rinsed out a few more times with distilled water, before being wrapped in tin foil and put into the muffler furnace where they're heated to 550 degrees.  Then after that, they're solvent rinsed with methanol chloroform.  All done with gloves, even the washing before the test tubes get heat blasted.  It all seems very wasteful.  I mean I'm using so much water to clean test tubes, while in California Tom Selleck has to steal public water for his avocado farm.

Also here's a crab that died on Friday: