Polyculture in fish farming as a method of preventing fish diseases

Abstract

Methods of prevention of fish diseases are aimed at destroying parasites in the host body and in the fish habitat — in the reservoir (chemoprophylaxis, increasing fish resistance), at preventing parasites from entering the reservoir (limiting the import of fish, import of healthy fish, quarantine measures, etc.), as well as preventing their spread and entry into the host body. It is shown that polyculture is not only the most effective method of using the natural forage base of the reservoir and, as a result, increasing fish productivity, but also a means of preventing mass infectious and other fish diseases. To prevent mass infectious diseases of fish and death from them both in safe and unfavorable ponds of carp fish farms, it is advisable to grow other fish species together with carp that do not suffer from diseases peculiar to carp. As a result, so-called sparse species plantings of fish are created in the ponds, while the total biomass remains high. At the same time, the natural food supply of ponds is most fully used and a kind of biological buffer is created that prevents the emergence and spread of contagious diseases. Polyculture can play a particularly important role in pond farms that already have certain problems with rubella, filometroidosis, botryocephalosis, carp pox, etc. Long-term studies of breeding herds in pond farms have shown that most of them have single foci of diseases, which, if there are optimal conditions for the pathogen, are ready to immediately respond with an outbreak of the disease or are generally quarantined for a particular fish disease. When determining the objects of polyculture, it is necessary to reduce the proportion of fish species that have a significant number of common diseases.