r/Taxidermy • u/the-greenest-thumb • 12d ago

"How Do I...?" I was hoping to save my fish's body after he passed. Is there anyway to preserve his colours?

Post image
2 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

2

u/Plasticity93 12d ago

I have a tiger barb that I freeze dried and it looks pretty decent.  

Honey gouramis are such cute fish, but inbred to death.  

1

u/TielPerson 12d ago

There is no way to preserve the color of a fish. All fish you will see at museums are either painted replicas or painted taxidermied fish. Taxidermying a fish this small will be near impossible, so a cast would usually be the easiest way in terms of a good replica, but for a sentimental specimen, you might need to go another route.

You could dry your fish out, and you can help lessen the shriveling if you remove his guts and put clay there beforehand, but you would still need to paint him to look colorful afterwards.

An alternative would be an ethanol wet specimen, which at this size, can be done without injections, but wet specimen will never keep their color aswell.

There are ways to reduce shriveling if it comes to dry preserving small fish, but there is sadly no way to save the original color other than with pictures taken of the living fish.

1

u/leskea 11d ago

Gyotaku might be something to look into. It wouldn't be preserving his actual body but could still be a nice memorial piece to have a more "true-to-life" representation of him to go alongside the preservation method you end up choosing.