GROWTH PERFORMANCE OF SILVER POMPANO Trachinotus blochii UNDER SEA CAGE CULTURE, RAMANATHAPURAM COAST OF TAMIL NADU
The aquaculture of pompano has been successfully established in many Asia-Pacific countries under ponds, tanks and floating sea cages. In India, the silver pompano (Trachinotus blochii) is considered as high value marine finfish because of fast growth rate, good meat quality and high market demand. Hence, the demand can only be met through aquaculture. In the present study, the experiment was conducted to assess the growth performance under sea cage culture.
A 7 months culture was conducted in a GI cage (6 m dia / Depth 3 m / Volume 85 m3) with silver pompano seeds (MBW of 5.25 g), which were procured from CMFRI, Mandapam, South India. The experiment was conducted in Ramanathapuram coast of Tamil Nadu, South India under sea cage method. Seeds were stocked in 3 different cages @ 4000 for cage 1, 3500 for cage 2 and 1500 numbers for cage 3 respectively. These cages fed with wet fresh trash fish @ 8 % of the total body weight, twice a day. Sampling was done once in a month. After a culture period of 7 months, the bio-growth parameters were calculated.
The calculated survival rate, mean weight gain & FCR is given in Table 1. The mean weight gains (g) of silver pompano recorded in 3 cages were 135.45 g, 98.81 g and 112.35 g in 7 months. The Student's t test analysis of the data relating to silver pompano fingerlings under different GI cages with days of rearing is given in Table 2 & confirmed that between the cages, the mean growth value of silver pompano fingerlings with days of rearing showed significance differences (P < 0.03 to 0.05) (Table 2).
