Fish health management

FISH HEALTH MANAGEMENT

Is a term used in aquaculture to describe management practices which are designed to prevent fish disease. When we talk about fish health management it should be noted that we are focusing on prevention of disease.

Fish like a human being, tend to be affected by pathogen forexample; Bacteria, fungi and parasites. Hence effective measures are required in prevent their causes and transmission mode.

Fish diseases are mainly classified in two groups which are

• Infectious disease

• Non-infectious disease

Infectious disease

• Can be easily transmitted from one fish to another fish
• Mainly are caused by pathogens
• Treatments is necessary to control diseases

Non-infectious disease

• Cannot be transmitted from one fish to another fish
• Mainly are contributed by environmental problems like nutritional deficiencies
• Use of medicines to control diseases are not necessary

Why we focus on disease?

Fish disease is one of the factor that contribute loss in fish farming business, how?

• Production costs are increased by fish disease outbreaks (dead fish and addition cost of treatments).

• Poor growth of fish hence fail in reach targeted market size
• Poor quality of fish and fish fillets in turn fish products are low priced and not favorable to the loss customers

Now we have discussed much about fish diseases, let see possible measures we can take in order to ensure good fish health and control diseases.

To make easy understanding by a fish farmer, we can categorized practices into  3 categories:

• Preparation period
• Fish rearing period
• Harvest period

Preparation period

Here it cover various issues at the beginning of our fish farming includes

Fish ponds should be early  and well prepared by allow ponds to dry for the period of at least one week in order to kills all disease vectors settled in the mud and remove all feeds remains and excess mud in order to control hiding place of pathogens

Liming of ponds to control diseases and pH level in the fish ponds

Inspect animals and itself from the source that produce manure to see if are safe to be used to fertilize fish ponds

Ensure presence of natural food in the ponds by fertilize ponds with natural manure because fish do not entirely depend on artificial feeds alone (50% natural feeds: 50% artificial feeds).

Fish rearing period

It covers issues like

Seeds

Farmer should make sure that he or she orders fingerling from well know and experienced hatchery centre.

Farmer should himself or herself inspect the conditions of fingerling instead of depend on servants or hatchery centre.

Transportation of fingerling should be conducted during early morning or evening to avoid stress to the fingerling which in turn affect their immune system made them vulnerable to disease.

Avoid overcrowding of fingerling, may give a chance of wounds and bruises hence increase a chance of infection to the fish. Instead fish and fingerling should be stocked based on the size of fish ponds or tanks.

Workers’ personal hygiene

Farmer himself or  servants should make sure that before come in contact with the fish, facilities and feeds they must be clean, there should be special clothes during fish handling and preparation of fish feeds in order to prevent spread of diseases and pathogens from outside.

Handling and feeding equipments should well sterile, cleaned with soap and stored in cool dry place.

Each activity should has it is equipments and facilities to avoid transmission of diseases.

Fish feeds and feeding

Fish should be fed according to their size and depend on fish response. This will help in control overfeeding of fish that produces wastes in which upon decompose disturb water quality and alter pH level which may favor pathogens growth.

Harvesting period

Before 2 up to 3 months. Farmer should make sure he or she has already gotten customers to buy his or her fish and hence avoid walks with fish in searching for the market which disturb fish condition and stress them.

A farmer should choose harvest system either batch system or all in all out system depend on customer needs and size.

It is good to announce the day of harvesting in order make sure that all customers are aware and well prepared to purchase.

After harvest, all ponds should be well dried and repaired

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