Monitoring of the mortalities and medications in the inland farms of olive flounder, Paralichthys olivaceus, in South Korea

Abstract

The monitoring was performed to survey the mortalities and medications occurred in the inland aquaculture farms of olive flounder in South Korea from May to October, 2012. Both of the indirect inquiry for entire inland farms and the sample survey for selected farms were carried out. The aquatic organism disease inspectors, who have the national licenses for the diagnosis and prevention of aquaticorganism diseases and have close relationship with the farms, investigated the rates and causes of mortalities according to the standard manual. The cumulative mortalities rate by the indirect inquiry on 565 farms, was calculated to 27.18%, and the mortalities rate by infectious diseases was 22.64%. Otherwise, the mortalities rate by sample survey on 60 farms was 25.50%, 19.33% of them were caused by infectious diseases. The high mortality rates were recorded by scuticociliatosis, non-infectious loss, streptococcosis, VHS, artificial eliminations, vibriosis and gliding bacterial disease. Streptococcosis and non-infectious mortality caused to serious loss in productivity and economy of the farms, because of their outbreaks in the flounder groups over 600 g. The monitoring of medications in the selected farms revealed that formalin for the treatment of external parasites, such as scuticociliates, was the most commonly used drugs in the farms. As the antibiotic medications, amoxicillin and florfenicol for streptococcosis, and oxytetracycline and neomycin expecting wide antibacterial spectrum, were frequently prescribed.