The impact of feeding algae and canola oil on the growth, survival and reproduction of Moina sp.

Abstract

The increasing demand for fish produced by aquaculture industries has led to a high demand of live feeds, such as larvae. Further development of culture techniques is important to lower the production costs as well as to maximize the production of natural food for larval rearing. Moina macrocopa is a potential freshwater live feed that can replace Artemia, which originated from a saline environment. This study aimed to quantify the growth, survival, reproduction and overall life table parameters of M. macrocopa when using alternative diets of Chlorella sp., canola oil, or a mixed diet (Chlorella sp. mix with canola oil). M. macrocopa were cultured and enriched with the concentration of 2000 mg L-1 in triplicates for each dietary treatment. It was found that there was no difference in the specific growth rate of M. macrocopa (P= 0.05) between the alternative diets. The survival rate of M. macrocopa fed on the mixed diet (109.97 ± 32.85 %) was significantly higher (P< 0.05) than when fed with Chlorella sp. only or with canola oil only. The reproductive performance (e.g. average initial age of reproduction) did not differ from one dietary treatment to another (4.00 ± 0.00 days). For the generation time (54.42 ± 8.75 days) of M. macrocopa the mixed diet was the most favorable choice. The intrinsic rate (1.32 ± 0.14 ind L-1 ) was the highest with Chlorella sp. feed. The findings from this study can be used to improve the performance of freshwater fish production in hatcheries by utilizing the highly nutritious M. macrocopa larvae as live food.

Keywords

• freshwater zooplankton
• moina
• enrichment
• reproductive performance