I am going to work on heavy metal estimation in various fish organs and studying the effect of these metals on fish physiology.
Best method is microwave assisted digestion. You can take 1 g (fresh sample) or 0.5 g (dried) samples in microwave tube and add 10 ml nitric and run the program. Then you can volume up it up to 25 or 50 mL amL as your wish. The acid combination, volume and sample weight depent on your instrumentation model.
You can use Fluoresence X (XRF), Particles Induced X-Ray Emission (PIXE), Neuton Activation Analysis (NAA); AAS (Atomic Absorption Spectrometry);Inductively Coupled Plasma Emission mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) technics.
This links maybe useful
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258848016_Assessment_of_the_state_of_pollution_by_heavy_metals_in_the_surficial_sediments_of_Algiers_Bay
Article Assessment of the state of pollution by heavy metals in the ...
You may try to use the Biotic Ligand Model(BLM) to assessment the toxocity of heavy metal to fish.
ICP-AES and ICP-MS will give you levels of metals within tissues in terms of concentrations per mg dry weight, whereas scanning electron microscopy will show you tissue alterations you might interpet as qualitative or quantitative data.
Good luck
Why not look at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › ... › PubMed Central (PMC), ir-library.ku.ac.ke/.../Mwangi,%20John%20Muiruri.p.., cals.arizona.edu/azaqua/ista/.../SAMIRMSAEED.pd is has alot of what you want.
Best method of heavy metal estimation is acid digestion through microwave digestion unit. For the analysis of these samples ICP-AES and ICP-MS is the best instruments to estimate heavy metals content.
For chemical analysis of metals, firstly samples are acidified and then analysed by ICP-AES (Varian Vista ProAxial, Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, USA) and using standard conditions. Method blanks were added to each set of sample. The
quality of the analytical method was checked by analysing the certified
international reference water—(BCR403).
Your question is building a consensus! For total organ metal content, the microwave acid digestion/ICP-MS approach (with blanks and standards, as appropriate) was our standard. There are lots of fun ways to go about this, depending on the specific physiological question you are asking. You may want to perfuse the organs to get the constituent metals (i.e., no blood), fractionate samples to look at distribution of metals within cells (e.g., cytosol, granules, microsomes), or you could use histology to look at spatial distribution. Take into consideration metals with metalloproteins/enzymes like SOD or CAT. I do not expect these to be a significant contributor to total organ metals, even when oxidative defenses are stimulated by toxic metals exposure, but if you are a student, be prepared to answer in relative terms just in case a professor asks about native metal content!
I agree with AAs, ICP-AES, XRF instruments. It's all depends on your needs, accuracy, and cost factor.