"Healthy sturgeon" - a practical guide to the diagnosis and treatment of sturgeon diseases in aquaculture.

 

How did the idea of this book come about?

 

Full-cycle breeding of sturgeon in fresh water is a relatively young direction of aquaculture, compared, for example, with the cultivation in artificial conditions of species such as carp or trout.

 

The main incentive for the rapid large-scale development of sturgeon breeding was a catastrophic reduction in the number of sturgeons in nature and the introduction, in this regard, of a ban on their fishing.

 

Within a short time, thousands of fish farms appeared around the world, some of which were previously cultivated by other species, while others were built specifically for sturgeon. The available knowledge about sturgeons characterized them as very resistant to various fish diseases. However, in practice, fish farmers from both old and newly created farms are faced with the fact that under artificial conditions all groups of sturgeon (from young to mature fish) are significantly susceptible to various diseases. There were frequent cases when in certain periods the death of sturgeon juveniles reached 90%.

 

One of the main reasons for this is that radical changes in lifestyle, expressed in the exclusion of the sea period and constant keeping in fresh water, have had a negative impact on sturgeon resistance to diseases that have not previously been noted at these fish. This is especially true for bacterial diseases that cause the most damage on sturgeon farms. Many fish farmers were not ready for this. As practice shows, if fishery specialists had taken timely measures to identify diseases in the initial stages, then, in most cases, it would be possible to prevent the mass death of fish and avoid serious losses.

 

Therefore, working on this book, we have tried to fully help fish farmers in solving the main problems: timely diagnosis of diseases, the choice of emergency measures to prevent the development and further spread of the disease and, most importantly, the creation of conditions that prevent the emergence of diseases of fish on the sturgeon farm.

 

The diagnostic and laboratory research methods described in this manual are focused specifically on the capabilities of fisheries laboratories, which are equipped mainly with optical equipment and rapid analysis tools. A detailed description of the external manifestations and clinical signs that in a fish farm will help to establish the onset of the disease in a timely manner was a priority task that the authors of this book tried to solve.