[Nhcoll-l] What water to use with spirit specimens

[Tonya.Haff at csiro.au]

Hello all,

I've been thinking about the best water to use for diluting ETOH down to 70% for storing formalin-preserved vertebrates.  Early on I was taught to only every use deionised water, to avoid the introduction of other chemicals, impurities, etc. However,  I have recently heard that using good quality tap water may be in fact better than deionised/demineralised water, as deionised water is not in a stable state and so can in fact pull minerals out of the specimen. I would love to hear what other people use and what your thoughts may be on this. Thanks!

Cheers,

Tonya

---------------------------------------------------------
Dr Tonya Haff
Collections Manager
Australian National Wildlife Collection
National Research Collections Australia, CSIRO
Canberra, Australia
Phone: (+61) 02 62421566

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20180927/595715cf/attachment.html>