Bacteria Communities in Swiss Fish Farms with Recirculating Aquaculture Systems

Recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS), often used in fish farming, rely on microorganisms to maintain healthy water quality, nutrient cycling, animal welfare, and disease control. However, many daily operations farms (e.g., stocking) may negatively affect the microorganisms' community composition create a favorable environment for opportunistic pathogens. Currently, understanding communities within RAS is scarce, which presents an obstacle pro-active system management. To better understand microorganism communities' spatial temporal structure using RAS, we collected samples of filtered biofilm swabs from two different Swiss locations each farm. Water was one tank biofilter, while were same tank's wall where sample collected. DNA extracted Purelink Microbial Purification kit, then prepared with three primer pairs, 341F/805R (V3V4 region), 515F/806R (V4), 27F/534R (V1-3), ran MiSeq platform (v3 600 cycles). The pilot study aimed 1) how microbiota changes regarding scales between farms, 2) effect detected taxa, 3) difference commonly-used 16s pipelines.