Asian-Pacific Aquaculture 2019

June 19 - 21, 2019

Chennai Tamil Nadu - India

MARINE ORNAMENTAL FISH BREEDING AS BOON FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF AQUARICULTURE

K. Madhu*, Rema Madhu, M. P. Mohandas, M. T. Vijayan and Suji Chandru  
Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Mariculture Division,
 P.B. No.1603, Ernakulam  North P.O., Kerala,  India. 682 0 18
 
email: kmadhu30@rediffmail.com
 

Aquariculture  is recognized not only  as an alternative livelihood option of rural and urban communities  but also production of  low volume high value export trade commodities.  Many reef systems are endowed with bright multi coloured export oriented ornamental fishes in India. Despite the enormous species availability, ornamental fish culture is not flourished in India due to various hindrance factors when compared to South East Asian countries. The  trade of marine ornamentals has been expanding in recent years and has grown into a multimillion dollar enterprises mainly due to the emergence of   improvised breeding technologies, setting and maintenance of miniature reef aquaria,  modern aquarium gadgets, and  aquarium fish keeping has also  become the second most  popular hobby in the world. However, India's contribution is  negligible, more than 90 % marine ornamental fishes are still collected from the wild during the  last three decades. Many ecosystems are also deteriorated due to illegal collection practices, global warming, etc. Even though the seeds are available in the nature, collection in large quantity in right time is a problem, and overdependence may also lead to depletion of the stock in the long run. In order to escalate marine ornamental fish production for this  multi stakeholder industry, series of issues to be addressed in the fields of collection, rearing under controlled conditions, wholesalers, transhippers, retailers, hobbyists, researchers, government resource managers and conservators, policies, etc. Among these, breeding and seed production under controlled conditions are the top most part which involve Collection and transportation of fishes, pairing,   broodstock management and  development, breeding system  setup and  management, provision of substrate for egg deposition (in the case of  attached eggs), feed formulation and broodstock feeding and  feeding schedule,  induced spawning through hormonal and manipulation of environment cues and social structure or natural spawning, incubation  of eggs , parental care and management of parameters. morphology and embryology of eggs, egg hatching and larval collection  and handling techniques, tank set up for larval rearing, Larval rearing, nursery rearing, growout culture and  quarantine. Apart from these, allied sections to substantiate larval rearing are micro algae stock and mass culture, Zooplankton stock and mass culture  (rotifers, copepod and cladoceran), zooplankton harvesting and handling, artemia cyst hatching  and harvesting and live zooplankton bio enrichments.  In addition to these, harvest of juveniles, packing and transportation are need to be conducted  for trade and other purposes. In these backdrop, many private, public and government research organisations like  CMFRI have  initiated breeding and seed production which is the sole alternative solution for livelihood option as well as  ecosystem conservation through sea ranching. Effort made by CMFRI in this line has resulted in the development of breeding technologies for more than 22 species of marine ornamental fishes,  and  many other ornament species are in progressing in the hatchery of CMFRI .