Vitamin C is an essential dietary ingredient for fish, prawn and shrimp. Fish, prawn and shrimp are unable to biosynthesize Vitamin C. Vitamin C is essential in prawn and shrimp for disease resistance, rapid growth, high survival and moulting. Vitamin C has also been linked to improving immune response, hormone production, mineral absorption and metabolism, and plays an important role in shell development and protein metabolism of prawn and shrimp. Vitamin C has also been shown to help detoxification of toxins, chemicals, pesticides and drugs.
One of the important functions of Vitamin C is in the collagen synthesis, which is an important aspect in muscle development of fish, prawn and shrimp. In prawn and shrimp, Vitamin C has also been reported to influence the alkaline phosphatase activity during the synthesis of chitin and sclerotization of the epicuticle.
Prawn and shrimp deficiency of ascorbic acid in the diet of prawn and shrimp results in reduced feed intake, poor conversion of food and protein, high incidence of post-molt deaths, dystrophy of muscle and hepatopancreas, blackening of gills and in extreme cases black death disease, whitened or blackened lesions and high rates of mortality. In prawn and shrimp, vitamin C deficiency led to the inhibition of alkaline phosphatase activity resulting in poor chitin synthesis and sclerotization of the epicuticle.
