44 Indian J. Fish., 64(1): 44-48, 2017 DOI: 10.21077/ijf.2017.64.1.60074-07 Effect of dietary incorporation of fish/prawn meal on performance of Catla catla (Hamilton) during nursery phase SUHAS PRAKASH KAMBLE, PRATAP CHANDRA DAS * , KARTIK CHANDRA PARIDA AND KEDAR NATH MOHANTA ICAR-Central Institute of Freshwater Aquaculture, Bhubaneswar - 751 002, Odisha, India e-mail: pratapcdas@yahoo.com ABSTRACT Nursery evaluation of catla spawn was carried out by feeding three iso-nitrogenous diets (35% protein in raw and cooked form) for a period of 30 days. The three test diets (treatments) in raw form were: T1 - groundnut oil cake (GOC) + rice bran (RB) + vitamin-mineral (V-M) premix; T2 - GOC+RB+fish meal (FM) + V-M premix, T3 - GOC+RB+prawn meal (PM)+V-M premix. The diet groups GT1, GT2 and GT3 respectively were same feed combinations in cooked form. Incorporation of prawn meal as animal protein source led to significantly higher final weight, final length, % weight gain, specific growth rate (SGR) and protein efficiency ratio (PER) compared to diet with and without fish meal incorporation. Whereas, diet containing fish meal improved the fry growth and survival rate only when it was cooked. Cooked diet either with fish or prawn meal incorporation led to better fry growth over the respective non-cooked diets, revealing the advantage of cooking process for better nourishment in catla fry during nursery phase. Keywords: Catla, Cooking, Diet, Fry, Growth, Nursery, Spawn, Survival Introduction Production of quality seed is a key factor for successful aquaculture operation. In India, the major carps (IMCs) are the key species which contributed 76.5% of the total fish produced from the culture sector (DAHD & F, 2014). However, seed rearing of these species has been often marred with poor growth and survival with the approximate spawn to fry and spawn to fingerling yield ratio generally at 3:1 and 6:1 respectively in earthen ponds. Most of the studies reported on the nursery rearing of carps (Jena et al., 1998a; Sahu et al., 2007; Das et al., 2016) have used simple mixture of powdered groundnut oil cake (GOC) and rice bran (RB) as feed supplements and the fry survival were limited to 30 to 60%. Probably, non-compliance of this supplementary feed mixtures to the nutritional requirement of carp from spawn to fry stage could be one of the major factors for such low survival as opined by many researchers (Varghese, 1976; Basavaraja and Antony, 1997; Das et al., 2016). Use of artificial feed prepared from various ingredients have yielded varied levels of fry performance in nursery phase of many species of freshwater fishes (Jena et al., 1998b; Jahan et al., 2013; Das et al., 2016). Das et al. (2016) reported 20% increase in survival of olive barb fry with fish meal incorporation in the conventional nursery diet (GOC and RB at 1:1 ratio, w/w). However, only limited systematic information is available on benefit of animal protein incorporation in the nursery diet for improved nourishment of major carp spawn. Besides the feed ingredients, the method of feed preparation is also reported to influence performance of spawn to raise fry. Takeuchi et al. (1994) reported that feed prepared from gelatinised (cooked) ingredients improved the apparent starch digestibility, protein efficiency ratio (PER), feed efficiency as well as whole body lipid content and decreased the relative feed consumption if fed to satiation. Among the three IMCs, the fry performance of catla in nursery phase has always been lower in terms of growth and survival as reported earlier (Jena et al., 1998a; Swain et al., 1999). In addition, unlike rohu and mrigal, catla shows a wide disparity in size during the nursery phase (Jena et al., 1998a). Since this species prefers zooplankton during nursery phase, provision of animal protein may enhance its seed output. The present study aims to evaluate the influence of fish and prawn meal incorporation and cooking of diet on the growth performance of catla fry during nursery phase. Materials and methods The experiment was conducted in eighteen glass tanks (30 l capacity) placed indoor in the hatchery complex of the ICAR-Central Institute of Freshwater Aquaculture (ICAR-CIFA), Bhubaneswar, India. Spawn of catla produced in the hatchery unit of ICAR-CIFA were acclimatised for 4 h in a 100 l FRP tank. Each tank was filled with 25 l of filtered pond water and