MONITORING OF ENROFLOXACIN AND ITS CHIEF METABOLITE CIPROFLOXACIN IN GOLDFISH Carassius auratus BY HIGH-PERFORMANCE THIN LAYER CHROMATOGRAPHY

Aquaculture has been recognized as one of the major industry in the world, which provides not only economic income and high - quality food product, but also provides employment to hundreds of thousand skilled and unskilled workers. Due to intensive aquaculture there is an increase of disease in fish farms which leads to the use of antibiotics. Use of antimicrobial agents in aquaculture has resulted in the emergence of antimicrobial - resistant bacteria in fish and other aquatic animals and aquatic environment. Now -a - day's enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin which belongs to fluoroquinolone family has been recently used in ornamental fish farms for treating bacterial infections. However, it was banned to be used in food fish, their use as antibiotics continuous in ornamental fish farms. This study aims for monitoring enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin residues in Gold fish by High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography. HPTLC has an advantage of economical and a simple analytical tool that can be used for the analysis of antibiotics in fish.

Gold fish samples were collected from ornamental fish farms in Chennai region. The samples were stored in a deep freezer until it is further used. The muscle + skin were separated from fish and weighed. The samples were extracted as per the standard method of enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin. All samples were examined for the presence of residues by microbial screening. The bacteria E.coli was the sensitive microorganism for enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin which was used for microbial screening. Then the samples were detected and quantified by HPTLC.

Totally 260 gold fish samples were collected and extracted. Form that, 11 were positive for enrofloxacin and 12 were positive for ciprofloxacin. However the concentrations of antibiotic in the positive samples were below 60 ppb which is below the MRL set by EU.