Objective: The expansion of marine aquaculture requires the shipment of early life stages from hatcheries to breeding centers. Thus, maintaining water quality parameters during transportation is crucial. This experiment investigated the effects of a commercial probiotic mixture (PM) (consisting of Bacillus licheniformis, Bacillus subtilis, Pediococcus acidilactici, and Lactobacillus acidophilus with a total count of 107 CFU/g) on water quality, bacterial population, and the survival of larvae of Yellowfin Seabream Acanthopagrus latus during a 24-h simulated transportation experiment.
Methods: To simulate transportation, purified seawater was used as a control and purified seawater supplemented with 3 g of PM was used as the PM48 treatment. For the PM48 treatment, 3 g of PM was added to 1 L of purified seawater and mixed with 200 L of purified seawater 48 h prior to the main experiment.
Result: The use of probiotics resulted in an increase in larval survival up to 93.3% compared with 89.85% in the control group. Initial sampling showed a statistically significant difference in levels between the control and PM48 treatments. After transportation, the pH of the control treatment showed a significant decrease. The total number of bacteria and the total number of Vibrio spp. in water and fish larvae showed that within 48 h, the probiotics became the dominant population in the PM48 treatment. After 24 h, water samples and larvae from the control treatment showed a significant increase in bacterial load.
Conclusion: The results showed that probiotics can play a significant role in maintaining biotic and abiotic water quality parameters, leading to a better survival rate of larvae during transportation. These findings represent an important step in improving long-distance transport protocols.
Keywords: Yellowfin Seabream; bacteria; larvae survival; probiotics; transportation; water quality.
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