Successful aquaculture requires practical and sustainable production methods.
The challenge is to develop profitable and sustainable culture facilities which will implement advanced technologies while minimizing adverse environmental effects.
This increasing concern regarding environmental effects of the industry and the increasing intensity of aquatic pathogens represents two of many motivations that have driven the interest of the aquaculture industry to examine alternatives to traditional methods of intensive aquaculture.
Recirculating aquaculture systems can be defined as an aquaculture system that incorporates the treatment and reuse of water with less than 10% of total water volume replaced per day.
Recirculating aquaculture system, or RAS, provides a constant and controlled environment for the fish or shrimp, allowing for optimal and fully manageable production of numerous aquatic species.
However, while Recirculating Aquaculture Systems offer fish producers a variety of important advantages over open pond and cage culture, they also present numerous challenges.
Many of these challenges are related to health management of the fish or shrimp which are cultured in very high densities while continuously exposed to a long list of stressors and sub-optimal environmental conditions. In these conditions, many disease-causing agents which are frequently regarded as chronic will exhibit aggressive behavior and a much more acute form of disease, resulting in low survival rates and severe financial losses.
In this presentation, Dr Ra’anan Ariav, a well – known Fish health specialist will describe in detail the specific veterinary management tools and measures for successful disease prevention and optimization of growth performance in Fish and Shrimp recirculated culture systems.
This presentation will be based on over 30 years of experience in veterinary management of recirculated culture systems in Israel and abroad.