GROWTH AND SURVIVAL OF BANANA SHRIMP, PENAEUS MERGUIENSIS LARVAE USING DIFFERENT PHYTOPLANKTON FEED

摘要

The shrimp seed is the prerequisite for successful shrimp culture and appropriate marine phytoplankton is of vital importance for successful shrimp production. Sometimes, nonavailability of Chaetoceros culture leads to failure in the seed production of P. merguiensis. It is necessary to select an alternative phytoplankton species as suitable feed for P. merguiensis larvae.The present work was undertaken to study the effect of four different phytoplankton species on the growth, survival and metamorphosis of P. merguiensis. The results indicated that a combined algal feed in the form of Thallassiosira and Cyclotella was most suitable, as with this feed, larvae were healthy, growth was fast and larvae metamorphosed to PL-I in eleven days and the survival was high i.e. 79.66%. Use of combined diatom feed rather than a single feed was found to yield better results. The smaller size of decapsulated cyst of Artemia over that of freshly hatched Artemia nauplii was found to be better suited for mysis and PL therefore, use of decapsulated cyst of Artemia at Mysis and PL stage was found to be beneficial. The phytoflagellates werefound to produce the lowest survival rates and PL production. The ANOVA conducted and the LSD test revealed that the postlarvae yield is significantly higher (P < 0.095) and growth is significantly faster when Thallassiosira and Cyclotella were used as afeed.