Abstract

BERNAL-BUITRAGO, Gerald F. et al. Evaluating a visible implant elastomer (VIE) tag system for cachama/pacu (Piaractus brachypomus). Orinoquia [online]. 2016, vol.20, n.2, pp.23-29. ISSN 0121-3709.

Identifying individuals in fish-farming has become standard procedure, thereby implying the use of an efficient, practical and economic tagging system. This study evaluated the visible implant elastomer (VIE) system related to growth, survival, retention and visibility in cachama/pacu (Piaractus brachypomus) fry. The study involved using 400 fish in two experiments (200 fish in each experiment): experiments 1 (4.5 ± 0.9 g) and 2 (8.26 ± 1.94 g) were evaluated over a 30-day period, the fry being randomly distributed in four 250-liter tanks. Following an 8-day acclimatisation period, 128 fish were tagged with 8 colours (following the manufacturer’s instructions): blue, red, green, yellow, orange, pink (fluorescent), Brown and purple (non-fluorescent); they were tagged on two parts of the body (dorsal/back and operculum/cheek area) which had already been defined in preliminary trials. Untagged fry (72) kept in the same conditions were used as control. All fry were measured and weighed at the start and finish of each experiment. It was determined that the implant/tag had no effect on growth (p<0.05) in either tagged fry or control. The survival of both types of fry in both experiments was 100%. Tag retention in both experiments regarding the back was 94.11% on average and 57.52% for the cheek area. Visibility with UV light was 96.6% on the cheek area and 92.6% for the back and without UV light 77.7% for the cheek area and 61.5% for the back. It can thus be stated that the dorsal/back area is the most viable position for using VIE with low-weight fry due to the high retention percentage, preferably using fluorescent reporters under UV light.

Keywords : growth; fluorescence; identification; implant.

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