Survival and Non-specific Immune Parameters of Nursery Carp (Spawn to Fry) Fed with CIFA-Carp Starter

Abstract

Background: Nursery phase is one of most critical phase in the production of stockable seed materials in carp culture. Generally, it is observed that the recovery of carp during spawn to fry is very low in farmers’ practice because of unavailability of nutrition rich feed with essencial macro and micronutrients. Methods: To address this problem, a nursery feed for carp was formulated and prepared using high-quality feed ingredients i.e. maize, soybean meal, groundnut oil cake (GNOC), fish meal, rice bran with supplementation of oil, minerals (with nano selenium and nano zinc) and vitamin mixture and compared the performance of nursery rohu with existing feed used by farmers Odisha, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh. During the demonstration period of two weeks (spawn to fry), fish of treatment ponds were fed with nursery feed (CIFA-Carp Starter) whereas the fish of control ponds were fed with existing feeds used by the farmers. The parameters like survivability, growth and immunity of nursery rohu in treatment ponds were recorded and compared with nursery rohu of control ponds. Result: The results of demonstration showed that, the weight gain, survival and immunity of nursery rohu was superior when fed with CIFA-Carp Starter compared to existing feed practiced by farmers in three states. Hence, there is need to popularise this feed for improvement of aquaculture sector in the whole country.