Lemon Tetra

Glassily transparent, lemon tetra (hyphessobrycon pulchripinnis) could appear to be just a sunbeam flashing through your community tank if not for background elements like plants and driftwood. Another member of large characin clan, lemon tetra has a fairly elongated body like its smaller relative neon tetra and like neons and other characins, lemon tetra does best if kept in small schools of six to eight fish.

One of most distinguishing features of lemon tetra is their large eyes. The upper part of lemon tetra’s eye is brilliant red, which is a sharp contrast to yellow pastels it displays in its body colors. Actually, though, lemon tetra is quite colorful on close inspection. Body coloring is a delicate pale yellow, flanks are silver, and leading edge of anal fin is shiny-bright-yellow and sharply divided from other rays, which are black. In male, rest of anal fin is broad and fringed in black, a characteristic that is missing in plumper female. As many male characins do, male lemon tetras also have tiny hooks on their anal fins. Both males and females have tetras’ characteristic adipose fin, which is also pale yellow in color.

Iron deficiency in dogs and cats

We have recently seen a number of cases of iron deficiency anaemia, both in cats and dogs. In iron deficiency, red cells do not develop normal complement of iron–containing haemoglobin and cells that form in bone marrow are small (microcytic, low MCV) and hypochromic (low MCH and MCHC). The process of red cell maturation becomes prolonged so young red cells no longer contain large amounts of RNA and therefore do not appear polychromatic. As a result anaemia is non- regenerative, with inappropropriately low reticulocyte counts. There is often a marked increase in variation in red cell shape (poikilocytosis) and red cell fragments (schistocytes) are often seen, as above. In cats, red cells are often so small that platelets appear larger than red cells and this overlap in sizing can contribute to apparently very high platelet counts as some automated counters include some small red cells in platelet count. Iron deficiency anaemia reflects chronic external blood loss, either through gut associated with bleeding tumours or ulcers or occasionally with severe flea burdens and parasitic blood loss.