Practices for Drawing Blood Samples from Teleost Fish

Abstract

In the field of fish physiology, the species‐specific parameters of blood, biochemistry, and hormones are especially unknown. The main reasons for this include difficulties in drawing blood from some fish species and nonstandardized blood reference values that change for fish weight, water temperature, and other environmental variables. Information and instructions for drawing blood from fish are limited, and there are few practical examples. Fish blood should be studied to determine metabolic disease and feeding disorders and also to improve rapid diagnostic kits for determining microbiologic diseases. This paper demonstrates methodologies for drawing blood from both aquarium and farmed fish and lists the advantages and disadvantages of each procedure, considering animal welfare and practicalities. Images and videos showing the different applications are also presented.

Practices for Drawing Blood Samples from Teleost Fish: Response to Comment

“…Our article (Duman et al. ) was focused especially on drawing blood samples from cultured species, including Rainbow Trout Oncorhynchus mykiss , European Seabass Dicentrarchus labrax , Gilthead Seabream Sparus aurata , and Common Carp Cyprinus carpio . Unfortunately, there are not enough experiments on drawing blood samples from living fish, especially cultured species, with videos.…”

“…Our work (Duman et al. ) focused on venous blood in diseased subjects. The subjects’ sizes were mainly around 500 g; note that if the marketed size is about 250–500 g, drawing small amounts of blood would not be sufficient.…”

“…The same methods we described in Duman et al. () can also be used for living fish if a small blood volume is sufficient (Argungu et al. ).…”

“…The title of our study (Duman et al. ) indicated that it was specifically designed to address methods of handling teleost fish. This includes the application to many types of teleost fishes, such as aquaculture species and some of the other alternative fish species for human consumption.…”

“…In Duman et al. (), the advantages and disadvantages of drawing blood from a large group such as the Teleostei were given based on fish species, body shapes, and especially fish weights.…”