Ocorrência de Neobenedenia melleni (MONOGENEA: CAPSALIDAE) em Garoupa-Verdadeira, Epinephelus marginatus (LOWE, 1834), cultivada em tanques-rede

Abstract

The precocious diagnosis of pathologies in aquaculture is constituted in a vital need for the success of the cultivations. The monogeneans capsalids are considered parasites opportunists and constituted in one barrier for the expansion of cultivations of marine fish. Outbreaks of infestation of Benedenia or Neobenedenia sp. can cause massal mortalities generating enormous damages in the cultivations. After sixty days of cultivation, dusky groupers Epinephelus marginatus (Lowe, 1834), with medium weight of 473,9 ± 109,5 g, cultivated in a floating cage of 8,0 m3 , in Ubatuba/SP, presented refusal of the feeding and symptoms as the darkening of the body, erratic swimming, opacity of the eyes, exoftalmia and hemorrhages in several areas of the body. After analyses of the fishes was identified the occurrence of Neobenedenia melleni in all groupers of this floating cage. After five days of the detection of the symptoms this clinical picture became worse, resulting, in the affected fishes, in lesions in the eyeball, blindness and extensive bacterial infections, following by mortality of 80% of the fishes.