[Nhcoll-l] Vial jar system for easier specimen collection maintenance

Wed Mar 16 08:30:55 EDT 2016

We used a similar system for many years, but nowadays have gone in the opposite direction. Our small samples are now kept in individual 4- or 6-dram vials with screw tops (phenolic cap with PPE Coneseal liner), stored in metal racks of our own design that allow up to 40 vials to be checked at a glance for fluid level.
Our chief reason for unpacking the individual vials from the jars was access - to get a vial on a lower layer in a jar, for example, many others have to be pulled out. By university (and US) regulations, that can only be done under a hood and therefore in a separate lab (we cannot open jars in storage rooms, only in labs). This means the whole jar must be moved, and if it gets dropped, mixing the broken vials and their contents on the floor, that can be a major disaster. There are other issues too; shared fluid means that exudates such as formaldehyde or lipids can migrate between lots, and conditions in individual lots can affect the fluid environment of the whole jar.

For long-term storage of samples to which access is not likely to be needed, however, the vials-in-jars arrangement has the admitted advantages of a single closure for multiple samples and space efficiency.

Paul Callomon
Collection Manager, Malacology, Invertebrate Paleontology and General Invertebrates
________________________________
Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103-1195, USA
callomon at ansp.org<mailto:callomon at ansp.org> Tel 215-405-5096 - Fax 215-299-1170

From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Bodil Kajrup
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2016 3:04 AM
To: Dirk Neumann; nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Vial jar system for easier specimen collection maintenance

One more thing: vials can be put upside down to reduce risk of desiccation, should the gasket fail.

Bodil
Fish collection, Stockholm

Från: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] För Dirk Neumann
Skickat: den 15 mars 2016 22:57
Till: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Ämne: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Vial jar system for easier specimen collection maintenance

... this is a very well considered system to maintain such delicate specimens - thanks for sharing this information!
Dirk

Am 15.03.2016 um 19:34 schrieb Alexandra Snyder:
The MSB Division of Fishes uses a system of vial jars to contain collections of small fishes and/or small numbers of specimens (single cataloged lots), delicate larval fishes and eggs, collections of excised stomachs and gonads, and developmental series of fish larvae.

The products used:  8 and 10 dram boroscilliate glass  shell vials, absorbent cotton plugs, 3 liter Le Parfait captive lid jars with Duro Buna N rubber gaskets, DataMax vial labels and jar label.

No more than 40 vials (or two layers) can be stored in one jar.  I do not use jars larger than 3 liters (or the ease of finding one vial is defeated) but will utilize smaller French captive lid jars 1 and 2 liter) with N-Buna gaskets for specialized/static collections.  The vial jars are topped off before they are stored in the cataloged collections.

I have used this system for storing small collections in two different collections that I have managed.  The MSB system has been in place for 25 years and over 1/3 of our collection (about 40,000 lots) is archived in the vial jar system. We are a collection that serves research in desert fish ecology-life histories and changes in aquatic systems of NM and the desert SW so our collections contain many larval fishes and redundant series from monitoring work.  The MSB Divisions of Arthropods and Parasites also use a vial jar system with 1 liter Le Parfait jars and N-Buna gaskets.

 I tried attaching a picture of these vial jars but it was rejected.   If you have further questions feel free to email me and I can send more information.

*************************************
Alexandra M Snyder, Collections Manager-Fishes
Museum of Southwestern Biology MSC03-2020
University of New Mexico Albuquerque NM 87131
PH./FAX 505.277.6005     amsnyder at unm.edu<mailto:amsnyder at unm.edu>

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Bldg.83  Room 204
302 Yale Blvd NE

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