Comparison of Different Anesthetic Protocols for Morphometric Measurements of Carp (Cyprinus carpio)

Measurement of growth performances in fish is carried out in stressful and unnatural environment. The purpose of the present investigation was to compare the effect of four different water-borne anesthetic agents. The fish (Ave. wt. 400.3±7.12 g) were divided into four groups in the glass tanks (80×48×30 cm) containing 80 L of dechlorinated bore water. For the first group we used clove oil (CO) and anesthetic agents used for other three groups were as follows: second group- lidocaine 1% (LC), III groupisoflourane (IF), IV group-halothane (HT). During experiment, water quality parameters (to, pH, О₂, and NO₃) were recorded. The desired concentration of anesthetics was established andinduction time, maintenance and recovery time were recorded. In two groups out of four (LC and HT) time of induction was longer approximately with 1 minute and time of recovery was shorter with 30 seconds in comparison with other two groups (CO and IF) where the time for both was 3 minutes. It could be concluded that the anesthetic time for each of the protocols used was about 4-5 minutes and allowed to measure the growth performance. An effective and safe agent is 1% lidocaine used as a water-based anesthetic at 100 mg.L^-1. Isoflurane can be used with caution in small carp because there is a risk of overdose. We recommend the anesthetic clove oil protocol.