REARING OF SILVER POMPANO Trachinotus blochii (LACEPEDE, 1801) IN RACEWAY SYSTEMS

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. This species is caught only sporadically in commercial fishing and hence its availability is rather scarce. Hence, the demand can only be met through aquaculture. The aquaculture of pompano has been successfully established in many Asia-Pacific countries under ponds, tanks and floating sea cages. But, in the present study, the experiment was conducted to assess the growth performance under race way systems.

A 6 weeks rearing trail was conducted in a raceway system (Length 1.5 m / Breadth 1.5 m / Height 0.80 m) with silver pompano seeds (MBW of 1 g), which were procured from Poliyur hatchery (RGCA), South India. The experiment was conducted in Mariculture Research Farm Facility at Tharuvaikulam, Thoothukudi District,     Tamil Nadu, South India. The raceway tank was provided with proper aeration facility. A total of 500 seeds were stocked and fed with commercial CP crumble shrimp feed (protein content of 35 %) & fed @ 30 % of the total body weight, thrice a day. Sampling was done once in 15 days. Water quality analysis was also done. After a rearing of 6 weeks, the bio-growth parameters were calculated.

The calculated survival rate, mean weight gain, FCR & FCE is given in Table 1. The mean weight gain (g) of silver pompano in race way rearing recorded was 20.30 g in 42 days. The correlation between mean body weight gains of T. blochii with days of rearing under race way is given in Table 2 & showed highly significant positive correlation (p < 0.01) with days of rearing.