Performance of olive barb, Puntius sarana (Hamilton) in fingerling rearing with rohu, Labeo rohita (Hamilton) and mrigal, Cirrhinus mrigala (Hamilton) J.K. Jena ⁎ , P.C. Das, R. Das, S. Mondal Central Institute of Freshwater Aquaculture, Kausalyaganga, Bhubaneswar 751002, India Received 25 August 2006; received in revised form 9 January 2007; accepted 9 January 2007 Abstract A 75 day fingerling rearing experiment of olive barb along with rohu and mrigal was conducted in concrete tanks of 50 m 2 each to evaluate the compatibility and growth performance of the species. Combinations of rohu–mrigal (T-1), olive barb–rohu (T-2) and olive barb–mrigal (T-3) were the treatments evaluated in four replicates. Survival of rohu, mrigal and olive barb in treatments were 95.9 ± 0.9%, 97.1 ± 2.6% and 92.4 ± 2.5%, respectively and did not differ significantly. Olive barb and mrigal showed no significant difference in net weight gain and SGR between treatments irrespective of species combination. On the other hand, rohu recorded significantly higher net weight gain (4.85 ± 0.38 g) and SGR (3.63 ± 0.05% day - 1 ) in combination with olive barb in T-2 than that (3.57 ± 0.37 g, 3.25 ± 0.06% day - 1 ) with mrigal in T-1. The overall species-wise net weight gain in olive barb (4.74 ± 0.43 g) was at par with rohu (4.21 ± 0.77 g), while both of them performed significantly better than mrigal (3.24 ± 0.66 g). Further, significantly higher net biomass gain in T-2 with rohu–olive barb combination over the other two treatments suggested the compatibility of the former two species and possibility of incorporating olive barb with Indian major carps in fingerling rearing system. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Olive barb; Rohu; Mrigal; Fingerling; Growth; Survival; Compatibility 1. Introduction The olive barb, Puntius sarana, is a widely distributed cyprinid in the natural waters of south-east Asian countries. In India, it is available all throughout except in peninsular region, south of the Krishna River (Jayaram, 1981). As a medium sized carp, the species has high market demand and fetches price even higher than the Indian major carps in several regions. Once common in ponds, rivers, streams, reservoirs and lakes of India, the natural stock of this species has dwindled to a great extent over the years and now they are categorised under vulnerable group (Mukherjee et al., 2002). Extensive studies have been made on biology of the species (Sinha, 1973, 1976; David and Rajagopal, 1975; Khumar and Siddiqui, 1991). Although the species was successfully bred in India through carp pituitary injection in early sixties by Chaudhuri (1962), no serious efforts have further been made on its breeding, seed rearing and grow- out culture in the country. Working with the species in Bangladesh, Chakraborty et al. (2003) have reported encouraging survival of 49–63% in a low-density nursery rearing at 0.7–0.9 million ha - 1 for six weeks. Aquaculture 265 (2007) 305 – 308 www.elsevier.com/locate/aqua-online ⁎ Corresponding author: Tel.: +91 674 2465421; fax: +91 674 2465407. E-mail address: jkjena2@rediffmail.com (J.K. Jena). 0044-8486/$ - see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.aquaculture.2007.01.008