The National Investigational New Animal Drug Program is operated by the Aquatic Animal Drug Approval Partnership. It is the only program in the United States singularly dedicated to obtaining U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of new medications needed for use in fish culture and fisheries management. Since the late 1990’s, Aquatic Animal Drug Approval Partnership Program has contributed to the majority of the new fish medications approved by the FDA.
Types of INADs
Medicated Feed
Medicated feed INADs are needed to help administer a medication to fish for internal bacterial infections or parasites. This would be similar to feeding your pet a medicated feed when they are sick. Using medication to help control disease/parasites can prevent significant fish mortality. Such treatment also reduces infectious agents in natural environments thereby reducing the spread of disease.
Immersion
Immersion INADs use a water bath to administer medication to fish. The immersion baths are used to treat external bacterial infections or parasites. This would be similar if you needed to give your pet a medicated bath to treat bacterial or parasitic skin infections. Similar to medicated feed, immersion baths help control disease/parasites and can prevent significant fish mortality by reducing infectious agents in natural environments thereby reducing the spread of disease.
Sedatives
Sedatives/anesthetics are used to reduce stress associated with the handling of fish. Typical fish work that involves sedating fish could include inserting tracking tags into the fish; measuring fish lengths and weights; and conducting fish health inspections. It is safer and less stressful for fish to be sedated when they are handled.
Spawning
Spawning aids are critical to induce spawning in fish in both hatcheries and in the field. Using a spawning aid enables spawning to occur during a predictable timeline which reduces the handling stress caused by biologists attempting to strip eggs or milt from the fish. Spawning aids are critical for the restoration of threatened/endangered species to ensure spawning that may not occur on its own due to lack of environmental cues.
Marking
Many stocking programs depend on mass marking young fish before releasing them into the wild. Resource managers are then able to identify the marked fish when they are recaptured which enables them to evaluate the success of the stocking programs and adjust the future needs of the stocking supplementation programs. If they find young fish without a mark that means the stocking program is successful as fish are now spawning on their own.
Injectable
Injectable therapeutic type INADs are most commonly used in returning adult broodstock broodstock
The reproductively mature adults in a population that breed (or spawn) and produce more individuals (offspring or progeny).
Learn more about broodstock (i.e. returning chinook salmon from the ocean to the hatcheries). Most of these returning fish they are no longer eating as they are close to the end of their life cycle (all salmon die naturally post spawning). Due to the physiological stress of the migration they may be more prone to internal bacterial. When needed, the medicine is injected into the fish to help them stay healthy long enough to spawn.
Use the following Drug Search feature to look up an INAD by name, type, or INAD number. Searches by ‘Type’ will allow you to compare INADs that can be used for similar purposes to help you find the INAD to best suite your fishery needs. Currently, the INADs are listed in numerical order by INAD number (beginning with the five-digit INADs numbers).