Evaluation of the growth performance, body composition and survival rate of juvenile snakehead (channa marulius) fed on different feeds

Abstract

This research was done to determine the influence of various feeds on growth increment, body constituents and survival rate of snakehead (Channa marulius) cultured in plastic tanks (42.5 liters water carrying capacity each). Fish juveniles (length: 10.63 ±0.980 cm, weight: 9.030±1.40g) were stocked after acclimatization. A total of 3 treatments were tested following 2 replications i.e. first treatment (T1, Squid feed), second treatment (T2, Tubifex feed) and third treatment (T3, pellet feed). Juveniles were fed with 5% of total biomass twice in a day. At the end, higher growth increments were found such as length and weight in average, T1=15.01±0.33cm and 15.80±0.01g, T3=14.13±0.76cm and 13.35±0.67g whereas in T2=11.80 ± 0.96cm and 10.47±1.19g lower growth were found. Specific growth rate (SGR) were obtained 1.160, 0.960 and 1.110 in T1, T2 and T3 individually differing statistically from all treatment groups. Similar situation was found in values of the condition factor which remained as 0.610, 0.720 and 0.620 for T1, T2 and T3, respectively. Feed conversion (FCR) were found to be non-significant among all treatments (P>0.05). Survival rate were 90% in T1 which was highest than T2 (50%) and T3 (80%). Water quality remained as temperature (25.2 ± 0.20 °C), dissolved oxygen (5.2 ± 0.11mg/L), pH (6.9 ± 0.15), ammonia (0.48 ± 0.02 1mg/L) and hardness (118 ± 2.4 mg/L). Our results indicated that better growth increment can be achieved on squid or pellet feed and so it is suggested that in similar culture conditions of Snakehead will be more profitable on pellet feed followed by squid feed.