Improved fish health: Key to succesful aquaculture

Abstract

Intensification of aquaculture has become an important practice in recent years to optimize the returns. High density stocking, providing artificial feeds and fertilization of the pond water have become common husbandry practices in both fish and shrimp culture systems. Due to intensification of culture practices in aquaculture, diseases caused by microbes have surfaced significantly in culture systems. Use of expensive chemotherapeutants and antibiotics for controlling disease have widely been criticized for their negative impacts like residual accumulation in the tissue, development of the drug resistance and immunosuppression, thus resulting in reduced consumer preference for food fish treated with antibiotics. Hence, instead of chemotherapeutic agents, increasing attention is being paid to the use of probiotic bacteria as microbial control agents.Another alternative to pathogens, use of immunostimulants for disease control measures in aquaculture. An application of immunostimulants for the prevention of fish diseases are considered as an attractive and promising area. In the present study the beneficial effects of probiotics and immunostimulamts on the health and disease resistance of fish have been elucidated.