Aqua -FSD
Background:
Fish anaesthesia is used to minimize stress during handling of fish for various purposes such as experimental challenge with microbes, collection of blood, breeding (collection of eggs & sperm) and tissue sampling etc. MS222 is the most commonly used fish anesthetic; however, it is relatively expensive, not easily dissolved in hard water and also need to be used in exact quantity to avoid the possibility of euthanasia to fishes as the safety margin is less. In additions MS-222 is less potent in warm water with high calcium content (as in hills). Many a times it is also not feasible to use MS222 anesthesia in field conditions due to unavailability of high precision weighing balance with farmers. Moreover, for farmers MS222 is costly Therefore, for routine research purpose in laboratory and to use in field conditions, we need an alternative anesthesia which is cost effective, easy/handy to use, has long shelf life and should be effective as well.
Technology Details:
To overcome some of the constraints with MS-222, we developed an safe and effective liquid anesthetic formulation for fish, which is very much cost effective than MS-222 (approximately 20 times cheaper than MS222), have long shelf life of 2.5 years when stored at 4°C, and also very handy to use as any ordinary dropper can be used for the application. It has no known toxicity in fishes and can be used for fishes of any age and species. No mortality of fishes was recorded during experimental trial. In addition, this formulation is equally potent in warm water with high hardness and has high margin of safety. The recovery time is also low (average recovery time is 30-60 seconds under aeration) for our anesthetic formulation. This technology will be used at state fisheries colleges, fishery universities, research laboratories and at fish farms to reduce or minimize the stress or injury to fish during its handling. The AQUA-FSD can be used for any regular sampling of fishes for research, academic and diagnostic purpose.