GROWTH PERFORMANCE OF BIG HEAD CARP Hypophthalmichthys nobilis FED ON MICROALGAE AND PELLET FEED: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Freshwater aquaculture is the most promising and viable culture method that paves way to development of new culture techniques towards fulfilling increasing demand of animal protein consumption. Microalgae are one of the most nutrient rich effective live feeds in freshwater aquaculture. Realizing the need, presently an attempt was made to ascertain the growth perforamnce of carp Hypophthalmichthys nobilis fed on microalgae viz; Chlorella vulgaris and Spirulina platensis and pellet feed. The parameters like growth performance, feed consumption, biochemical makeup, blood analysis were studied in the fish and the water quality parameters were also monitored and the results were compared. The study revealed that the fishes fed on microalgae (C. vulgaris and S. platensis) better results in terms of growth compared to the ones fed on pellet feed. Besides, the blood leucocytes oxidative radical production was also increased in algae fed fishes. True to this, the algae fed fishes also showed strong resistance towards P. chlorophis infection and water quality parameters were also found to be within the permissible range. The bacterial challenge assay, bactericidal activity, and NBT proved the increased rate of phagocytosis which in turn has a good improvement of immunity in the microalgal fed culture compared to pellet feed control culture, and thus S. platensis proved better growth performance.