Abstract

Mukti Pada Bag , Subhas Chandra Mahapatra , Pavuluri Srinivasa Rao , Debajyoti Chakrabarty

A study was conducted to evaluate the nutritional potentials of three commonly available, aquatic weeds namely, lemna (Lemna minor), water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes Crassipes ) and azolla (Azolla pinnata) for ascertaining their suitability as complementary fish feed with the aim to reduce the cost of traditional feeds. Three isonitrogenous (30% crude protein approximately) and isocaloric (4.0 kcal g−1 approximately) diets were formulated including lemna, water hyacinth and azolla as principal ingredient. Three groups of juvenile fish of fifty (50) number per group (Average wt.5.5 g;Average length 4.5 cm) were fed with three different types of feeds with lemna meal (LNM), water hyacinth meal (WHM) and azolla meal (AZM) for 90 days duration. Significant difference (P<0.05) in body weight gain, protein efficiency ratio and gonadosomatic index were observed among fish fed the LNM, WHM, AZM and control diets (CON). All treatments are significantly higher than control in respect to value of weight gain, PER and GSI. The lemna possibly contains better quality of protein which in turn influenced somatic as well as reproductive growth of those fish. Fish fed with three kinds of feed formulations exhibits no apparent variations with the control ,which means that the feed provide to the fish has no impact on accumulation of PUFA especially n-3PUFA. The n-3/n-6 ratio also shows little or negligible variations.