Fish Health Management

The Effects of Stress on Health

Fish health management is a term used to describe management practices that are designed to prevent fish disease. Successful health management begins with prevention of disease rather than its treatment. Controlling stress during health management operations such as health checks, vaccinations and bath treatments will maximise the ability of your fish to withstand infection or re-infection by ensuring the immune system is strong.

Health Checks

Routine monitoring of your animals for bacterial, viral and parasitic diseases is critical to maintain good fish health. Sampling fish for disease symptoms involves removing a sub-sample from the population and screening the individuals for disease. When removing fish from the water they must always be sedated. AQUI‑S^® sedation will ensure fish survivability and growth post-handling.

It is usually the process of capturing the animal that causes the greatest stress response. In order to maximise the benefit of using AQUI‑S^® we recommend that fish are carefully crowded using low stress handling techniques then sedated with AQUI‑S^®. Once fish are handleable, i.e. showing no response to being removed from water, health checks can be carried out.

Vaccinations

It is common practice on most aquaculture farms to vaccinate the fish at least once in their production cycle. Vaccination is achieved by either immersion for a period of time (generally 30 seconds to 30 minutes) or by injection, usually intraperitoneally (in the abdominal cavity). Sedating fish with AQUI‑S^® before these handling procedures improves fish survivability and the effectiveness of the vaccine.

Bath Treatments

Bath treatments use compounds that are often toxic or irritating to the fish and result in significant stress in the animal. Bath treatments vary in duration from seconds to hours with short treatments often causing as much or more stress than longer treatments. Sedating the animals with AQUI‑S^® before and during bath treatments to a level which ensures they maintain swimming action and equilibrium, is critical to bath success and fish survival. In these instances AQUI‑S^® sedation will ensure a strong immune system and limited to no loss in growth post bath.

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