I find this topic very interesting especially when, as a student, I tried to extract otoliths from Hippocampus ingens. I followed this methodology , commonly used for fish larvae to extract saggita, lapillus and asteriscus: https://goo.gl/Tw55ou.

I did not have much success but I'm sure it was because of my lack of experience, which was improving with the last samples analyzed. Maybe it works for you. I hope I have been able to help you.

Another thing you can try is dehydrate the tissue with 90-85% ethanol, then extract the otoliths by crumbling the tissue with your fingers, this method is not very scientific, but works very well with small freshwater fishes. Greetings.

Thanks Javier Jesús Coasaca-Céspedes for your comments and suggestions. We'll try them!

Greetings

Good Subject

I got otoliths from the juveniles of the polar flounder 2-2.5 cm under the microscope, an increase of 4x8 in a Petri dish with water, otoliths to 1 mm. initially, the fingerlings were frozen.

Thanks Gennadiy Fuks , we work under the stereomicroscope with the head cut off the rest of the body (fish are around 15cm TL) put on a petri dish filled with 96% ethanol, but otoliths are so small that they are lost between the soft tissue, no way to find them...

alternatively, make a careful incision of the head, cut off the medulla oblongata, remove it, turn the head down the incision and stir inside the head. the otoliths fall to the bottom of the Petri dish, I was good.

Thanks Gennadiy Fuks , we'll try it. Thanks a lot for your time.

Hello

I am working on Aphanius sp. the otolith size of may specimens is between 0.5-1 mm. The approximate locations of the otoliths are found in the fish head and they are located on the posterolateral side of the cranial . For extract the otoliths, the middle side of the cranial floor is broken with fine Forceps under a stereo microscope, then the otoliths are removed from soft tissue.

Best wishes

For very small otoliths (juveniles and larvae) we dissolve the whole head (or part of the head) with bleach (high concentrated solution). The NaClO should not dissolve the CaCO3 from the otoliths. We put the heads in a multiwell plate with bleach and we monitoread them with a stereomicroscope. I catch the otoliths from the well with a plastic pasteur pipette and i put them in another multiwell filled with tap water (for "wash" the bleach).

I hope you find this helpful

Following

Good comments by Jose