EFFECT OF DIFFERENT PROTEIN AND FAT LEVELS ON AMINO ACID AND FATTY ACID VARIATION IN MORPHOTYPES OF NURSED Macrobrachium rosenbergii POST LARVAE (DE MAN, 1879)
An experiment of 60 days was conducted to assess the effect of variation in dietary protein and fat in diets on growth of nursed Macrobrachium rosenbergii Post larvae (PL) which were stocked in 300 L tanks at stocking density 2 PL/10 L (N=50). They were fed with two formulated feeds with different dietary protein and fat levels; first treatment (T1) with 35% protein and 5% fat, and second treatment (T2) with 40% protein and 5.5% fat. After 60 days, among the 2 treatments 3 morphotypes were recorded according to growth, i.e. M1≤4.0cm, M2=4.1-4.5cm and M3>4.5cm among which M1 were considered stunted or laggards and M3 were considered jumpers. Overall survival percentage in treatment T2 (79.33 ± 3.06) was observed to be higher than that of treatment T1 (76.67 ± 3.06). Weight gain, specific growth rate, feed conversion ratio and protein efficiency ratio in treatment T2 were also observed to be favorable among two treatments. The amino acid and fatty acid profile of the whole body tissues of jumpers (M3) and laggards (M1) from treatments was found to have only major differences among Methionine, Valine and Tyrosine for amino acids and among all Monounsaturated Fatty Acids (MUFAs), linoleic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) for Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFAs).
