Immune Stimulants and Antibiotics for Shrimp Culture

Disease prevention strategies fall into two broad categories. These are reactive and proactive strategies. There are various tools available for these and various management philosophies incorporate some or all of them. The most common tools for reactive management of diseases are antibiotics. In the US there are very few antibiotics that are specifically approved for use in aquaculture, though recent legislation does allow for veterinarians to prescribe, at their own risk, a much wider variety of compounds. The most common tools for proactive or disease prevention are compounds that stimulate the immune system. Immune stimulants fall into three categories, nutrients that act indirectly on cell physiology, those that work in a specific manner such as vaccines and those that are non-specific in nature such the beta 1-3 glucans, alginates and LPS based materials. This paper briefly reviews the use of antibiotics as reactive and proactive tools and the role of non-specific immune stimulants in shrimp culture.