What is it about?
Aquaculture often uses Biofloc Technology (BFT) for sustainable shrimp farming. These systems rely on a complex mix of beneficial microbes, called bioflocs, to maintain water quality. Farmers frequently add probiotic bacteria, assuming they improve the system. This study investigated if adding various commercial and native probiotics to already established and mature biofloc systems (without shrimp) actually made a difference to water quality (like solids and algae) or the key bacterial communities responsible for cleaning the water. We found that in mature systems, the added probiotics generally had little short-term impact on water parameters or the most common bacteria.
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Photo by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This research challenges the common practice of routinely adding probiotics to mature biofloc systems, suggesting it might be an unnecessary expense and effort for farmers.
Perspectives
Our findings suggest mature bioflocs are robust and self-regulating. Future research should focus on optimizing probiotic use in newly started biofloc systems or when systems face stress. This could lead to more targeted, cost-effective probiotic strategies, benefiting shrimp farmers by reducing unnecessary inputs while maintaining environmental stability.
Dr. Anselmo Miranda-Baeza
Universidad Estatal de Sonora
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Short‐term effect of the inoculation of probiotics in mature bioflocs: Water quality parameters and abundance of heterotrophic and ammonia‐oxidizing bacteria, Aquaculture Research, October 2019, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/are.14371.
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