AADAP facilities and capabilities...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) AADAP Program is co-located with the FWS’s Bozeman Fish Technology Center (BFTC; 4050 Bridger Canyon Road, Bozeman, MT). The BFTC campus is comprised of a Main Office/Lab Building (Robert G. Piper Building), Hatchery Building, Fisheries Containment Building, Quarantine/Isolation Lab, Nutrition and Feeds Development Lab, and a Bioassay Building. Cold springs supply 6–7°C water, with a combined flow fluctuating seasonally from 300 to 1,500 gpm, to fish rearing facilities. One warm spring supplies 70–300 gpm of 21°C water, and two warm water wells supply 50–100 gpm of 23°C water.

The Robert G. Piper Building comprises 14 offices, 2 conferences rooms, and 7 labs. Lab functions include physiology, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, radioimmunoassay, immunology, histology, and fish necropsy. Lab space assigned to or shared by AADAP allows for research to be conducted in compliance with Good Lab Practice (GLP) regulations. The necropsy/histology lab is equipped with a Leica ASP300 Advanced Smart Processor, Leica EG 1160 Tissue Embedding System, Leica RM 2255 Rotary Microtome, Leica Autostainer XL Automated Slide Stainer, and an assortment of analytical balances, spectrophotometers, and water chemistry meters and probes.

The AADAP Program conducts aquaculture drug efficacy and GLP-regulated target animal safety studies in the Bioassay and Fisheries Containment buildings. The Bioassay Building is the primary AADAP GLP testing facility, and it is supplied with cold spring and warm spring waters that can be mixed to achieve a wide range of water temperatures, ultraviolet (UV) disinfection, and fish containment. This building also contains enough fish tanks (2-ft-diameter circular fiberglass tanks and 4-ft-long rectangular aluminum tanks) to conduct replicated studies in which tank is the experimental unit. The Containment Building is supplied with cold spring and warm spring waters and contains three water re-use systems, UV disinfection, a drum filter to prevent fish escapement, and a thermal system capable of heating water to 30°C. This building also has over 200 fish tanks (4 to
30-ft-long rectangular aluminum tanks and 2 to 6-ft diameter circular fiberglass tanks), which allow numerous studies to be run simultaneously. For more details on facilities and analytical capabilities, visit the BFTC website at http://www.fws.gov/bozemanfishtech.