High diversity of bacterial pathogens and antibiotic resistance in salmonid fish farm pond water as determined by molecular identification employing 16S rDNA PCR, gene sequencing and total antibiotic susceptibility techniques

• Total bacterial counts 1730 colony forming units (cfu)/ml water and 3260 cfu/ml.
• Acinetobacter, Aeromonas, Chryseobacterium, Erwinia, Flavobacterium, Pseudomonas and Rheinheimera identified.
• One unnamed novel taxon was identified, namely Acinetobacter movanagherensis.
• Total antibiotic resistance was observed to varying degrees in water specimens.
• No resistance to tetracycline and limited resistance to ciprofloxacin.

The aim of this study was to examine the microbiological and related parameters (antibiotic resistance and pathogen identification) of water at two salmonid fish farms in Northern Ireland. Total Bacterial Counts at the Movanagher Fish Farm was 1730 colony forming units (cfu)/ml water (log10 3.24 cfu/ml) and 3260 cfu/ml (log10 3.51 cfu/ml) at the Bushmills Salmon Station. Examination of resulting organisms revealed 10 morphological phenotypes, which were subsequently sequenced to determine their identification. All these organisms were Gram-negative and no Gram-positive organisms were isolated from any water sample. From these phenotypes, eight different genera were identified including Acinetobacter, Aeromonas, Chryseobacterium, Erwinia, Flavobacterium, Pseudomonas and Rheinheimera. One unnamed novel taxon was identified from water at the Movanagher Fish Farm, belonging to the genus Acinetobacter and has been tentatively named Acinetobacter movanagherensis. No other novel taxa were observed. All but one of these environmental organisms (Erwinia) are potential pathogens of fish disease. Total antibiotic resistance was observed to varying degrees in water specimens. The most resistant populations were observed in water taken from the Bushmills Salmon Station inlet, followed by water from the Movanagher Fish Farm. No resistance was observed against tetracycline and there was only one occurrence of resistance against ciprofloxacin. Overall, this study indicates that potential fish pathogens made up the majority of environmental organisms identified, even in the absence of recorded fish disease. There was also relatively high levels of total antibiotic resistance in the bacterial water populations examined, where tetracycline was the only antibiotic with zero resistance. These data indicate that the threat of bacterial disease is relatively close due to the indigenous colonization of farm water and that husbandry standards should be maintained at a high standard to avert bacterial disease outbreaks, rather than relying on the absence of specific pathogens in the immediate farm environment.