Muralidharan Velappan, Deecaraman Munusamy and Saritha Valsalam
The objective of this study was to determine the presence and density as well as the antibiotic profile of Vibrio cholerae isolated from ornamental gold fish (Carassius auratus).A total of 175 ornamental gold fish (Carassius auratus) were analyzed for the presence of Vibrio cholerae bacteria. Infected and moribund gold fishes skin, gill and intestine were collected for the bacteriological investigation in the month of March 2017 to December 2017at a local breeding farm in Chennai. The obtained samples were confirmed by polymerase chain reaction-plating on TCBS agar methods, V. cholerae was detected in 50 samples and also V. cholerae O139 was detected in 14 samples, with a density ranging between ˂ 3.5 to 85.0 MPN/g respectively. The isolated V cholerae were further subjected to antibiotic susceptibility test in Mueller-Hinton agar using disc diffusion method of 10 different antibiotics. All the V cholera isolates shows highly resistant to Penicillin, Amoxyclav, Kanamycin and Cefotaxime when compared with other antibiotics used in this study. The MAR index values of 0.2 to 1.0 indicate that the isolates were exposed to high risk sources in the environment. This study also recommends saquariumfish may disseminate the bacteria in the aquatic environment and may transfer it to water birds that consume them. Thus, aquarium fishes are reservoirs of V. cholerae and may play a role in its global dissemination.