FEASIBILITY OF Astyanax lacustris FARMING IN MONOCULTURE AND IN INTEGRATED CULTURE WITH DETRITIVOROUS SPECIES

The integrated aquaculture has been regarded to increase the sustainability from traditional monoculture because it optimizes the  use of natural resources and increase the production . Thus, t he aim of this study was to evaluate the  technical  feasibility of producing A. lacustris  in integrated systems  with Amazon river prawn (Macrobrachium amazonicum) and Curimbatá (Prochilodus lineatus) to improve sustainability.

A completely randomized- design  experiment  with three treatments and four replicates were performed. The treatments were : lambari monoculture (MONO ); integrated system with lambari and prawn (I-LP );  integrated system  with l ambari, prawn and c urimbatá (I-LPC).  Only the lambari were  daily fed. The means of the final indivi dual mass and length, survival and yield were calculated for each species in each pond. The  feed conversion ratio (FCR)  in the integrated systems was based on the sum of all harvested animal biomass.

The final  mean mass and length , survival and the yield of the A. lacustris and the M. amazonicum were similar among treatments (Table 1). This result indicates that the prawn and curimbatá did not affect the lambari performance, and that the curimbatá did not affect the prawn.  The  total yield , considering all species,  increase and FCR decrease with the addition of prawn and curimbatá. Therefore, data indicate that the integrated culture of lambari , prawn and curimbatá is technically feasible and improve the use of space, water and feed.