Broken skull disease, concentration of salt in water.....

Broken skull disease, concentration of salt in water.....


Hello Chris & other fish farmers in solidarity,
Broken skull disease has been well studied and curing it using
vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid) supplementation has also been well
documented, just like Chris said.
Many authors and practitioners alike have suggested several
procedure (all of which describe vitamin C supplementation
differently) Part of which Chris has also described. However, I am
concerned with the concentration of salt Chris was talking about
during the curing process.
It is mandatory to express concentration of salt (or any chemical
material to be used on animals for that mater) based on amount in
weight per volume of water or in volume of standard solution of
chemical in volume of water (and not per number of animals as Chris
used, which is mis-leading), otherwise we risk over-dozing.
In preventive medication with salt (eg when you are trying to
quarantine newly introduced fish into your ponds from another farm
that you are not sure of), I am aware that 5ppt or 5 parts per
thousand is adequate. This means weighing 0.5 kilos of salt into
every 100 liters of water or 5 kilos salt into every 1,000 liters of
water (whichever is easier to understand). However, in curative
medication (eg when fish are infected with a particular disease and
you want to stabilize them with salt before you apply other
medications), up to 10 ppt have been used depending on the enormity
of the infection. Of course, suspending feeding for a period of up
to 3 days has been recommended during the process of salting.
To avoid the disease in question (broken skull), it has been
recommended by NRC (National research council, USA) that farmers
ensure that the Ascorbic acid supplementation rate in catfish feed
be 100 mg ascorbic acid per kilogram weight of feed but a in a
research in Nigeria, it was recommended that we would require 150 mg
per kg feed for catfish (This was published in Journal of fisheries
International in 2006, I can forward it to those interested). Please
always check the nutrition label on the feed you are giving to your
fish and if it is below this, either buy and add more or to be on
the safer side, change to a more reliable feed.
May Allah help Nigeria!