Does Prior Anesthesia with 2-Phenoxyethanol Reduce Stress Response of Black Porgy to Air Exposure?

In many occasions such as injection or healthy examination, we often need to immobilize fish with anesthetics to ease the handling. 2-Phenoxyethanol (2-PE) can effectively anesthetize fish and allow them recovery in short time. Herein, the aim of this study was to investigate whether prior anesthesia with 400 μl/l 2-PE can mitigate the stress response caused by air exposure in black porgy, Acanthopagrus schlegeli. The result showed that porgy exposed to air for 3 min without prior anesthesia only had significantly higher values of plasma osmolarity but those treated with 2-PE had significantly higher values in plasma glucose, osmolarity and total protein. Hence, prior anesthesia with 2-PE did not reduce the stress response but enhances it.