Fish Farms

[chishnfips]

I was watching a video of how fish are transported via helicopter from one fish farm to another and I started thinking about how the fish cope with it all.

We all try to take proper the precautions to make sure our beloved fishies are stress free and have the correct water conditions and surroundings when we move them or even just for keeping them.

But the fish on the farms must go through intense stress. What with getting thrown from one barrel to the next, chucked from fresh water straight into salt water, from different temperature changes in the water to over crowding in the cages, it must be a nightmare for the fish.

So are there any guidelines that fish farmers have to follow regarding the welfare of these kind of things, and do they use things that are similar to stress coat to treat the fish with?

My brother used to work on a fish farm ages ago and I know they treated the fish now and then for sea lice and stuff but thats about it.

He also tried to get them shut down for using the wrong kind of chemicals. I think they were using the equivilent to ship dip for delousing the fish. It was on the news and all sorts and in the end they had to sell up. (serves them right). But this type if thing must go on all the time.

I just wanted to know your thoughts.

 

[annka5]

I don't know the details, but am sure that they are routinely dosed with antibiotics and the like, as the conditions are very crowded. They also have hormone-treated foodstuffs to give them a "healthy colour".
It's no different from other factory farming methods, e.g. battery chickens, most pig farming. Actually, I think that battery chickens/pigs etc is worse becuase they are arguably more intelligent animals.
I'm not a vegetarian and have no problem with eating meat, but I avoid buying factory-farmed chicken, pork, and beef. I've always assumed fish farming wasn't as bad....

 

[chishnfips]

sorry that said ship dip, it was meant to say sheep dip.

Yeah I eat meat aswell, but I was wondering how the fish cope with the stress, I mean if they are salmon does the sudden change from fresh water to salt water bother them?

Because salmon obviously can survive in both, for spawning and so on. I remember my brother saying that the fish weren't fed for a couple of days to reduce the stress.

 

[CFC]

Put it this way, the ones taken from the wild probably have a better time of it.

Most commercial fish farms use forced breeding techniques to make the fish spawn, they do this by either adding hormones to the water or by injecting the fish with hormones directly.
The aim then is to create as much profit as possible as fast as possible so the fry are kept in crowded plastic tubs and fed high protein foods to fatten them up for sale as quickly as they can.
When they are ready to be sold they are scooped up by the hundreds and transfered to bagging stations where as many as 500 fish are crammed into one bag.
Then its off to the airport to be shipped to whatever country they are being sent to, often the boxes will spend hours on the runway waiting to be loaded.
It is not unusual for losses of up to 50% of the stock on arrival.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

The common guppys hardiness has been shattered through intensive fish farming. Because the fish are kept in such crowded quarters in huge numbers, desease epidmeics aern't uncommon. Due to this livebearer breeders use huge quantitys of meds and antibiotics on the fish wether they are ill or not to help prevent desease outbreaks.
But they have been doing it for so long now that the guppys imune systems don't get to develop properly and this gets passed on from generation to generation so you end up with guppys that have very poor imune systems.
Also because of the huge demand for unusualy colored and patterned guppys, breeders are put under alot of pressure to come up with new color and pattern variations quickly, they achieve this by line breeding and inbreeding the guppys, which even further wreaks their imune systems, lowers their lifespans and increases the chances of brithing complications and mutations in fry.
Because so many of the delta tailed guppys have been bred for so many years in small tanks to produce betta like tails on them, their tails are so heavy and weak that they often rip when the guppy gets put in a large tank or one with strong filter current, they can die of exhustion and shredded tails.
All of this intensive med and antibiotic use is having other consequences on non related fish as it encourages strains of fish deseases to mutate in an effort to out do the meds and you end up with super strains of fish deseases that are resistant to meds, which is not good.

Although mollys havn't been so intensely bred like guppys, they also have their fair share of issues. Mollys can live in both brackish and freshwater setups, even marine. Fish breeders tend to breed them in brackish setups as they produce bigger batchs of fry more successfully, but mollys don't make alot of money when sold as brackish or marine fish.
So the breeders quickly acclimatise to freshwater setups for sale as it makes more money, the vast majority of the time though the mollys are not given enough time to acclimatise to the new enviroments, on top of the stressful transporting journey they have to go through to the lfs, a large majority often die from this process within a week. Mollys bred in freshwater fair very well in freshwater setups but farm bred brackish ones do not unfortunatly.

 

[chishnfips]

It's a subject that I dont know that much about unfortunately, but one that seems no-one really bothers about apart from a select few.

It seems strange to me that fish are treated so differently than other animals.

 

[Dragonscales]

Just out of curiosity, are you talking strictly about aquarium fish or table fish as well? I'm just asking because I saw the mention of salmon in there somewhere (not really thought of as an aquarium fish generally lol). Table fish are kept quite considerably better and looked after quite well in most cases. They have to be because otherwise it spoils the taste, texture, etc.

I talk to a guy who works on a tuna farm here in Oz on a different forum and from the sounds of it the fish there are looked after almost to the point of being spoilt