84 International Journal of Research in Fisheries and Aquaculture 2015; 5(2): 84-88 ISSN 2277-7729 Original Article Hatchery rearing of Gold fish (Carassius auratus) larvae using different zooplankton live foods Ananthan Janakiraman and Kareem Altaff* Unit of Reproductive Biology and Live Feed Culture, P.G. & Research Department of Zoology, The New College (Autonomous), Chennai- 600 014, India * Corresponding Author: kaltaff@rediffmail.com Phone no: 094441 08110; Fax no: 044-28352883 Received 08 January 2015; accepted 27 January 2015 Abstract There has been distinct mouth size and temporal variation in the endogenous, endo-exogenous and exclusively exogenous feeding stages of the larvae of fishes and availability of suitable feed for these different stages is essential for their growth and development.In hatchery seed production, higher percentage of survival, growth and optimization of larval production depends on provision of appropriate feed for different stages of fish larvae. Hence there is persistent efforts to produce indigenous live food or alternative dry food for hatchery seed production. Present study reports growth performance and survival of hatchery reared gold fish (Carassius auratus) larvae with four different live feeds, Brachionus plicatilis, Ceriodaphnia reticulata, Apocyclops dengizicus, mixed zooplankton (B.plicatilis, C.reticulata and A.dengizicus) and a dry pelletized feed. At the end of 35 days feeding experiment significant differences pertaining to length and weight gain of larvae was recorded in all the feeds tested.Of the five feeds experimented, live feeds (rotifer and mixed zooplankton 95%, copepod 90%, cladoceran 85%) provided better survival of early of gold fish larvae than the pelletized commercial feed (60%). Results suggest that rotifer and copepod larval live food is more suitable than cladoceran and pelletized feed for the hatchery seed production of gold fish larvae. © 2015 Universal Research Publications. All rights reserved Key words: Gold fish, Larval rearing, Live feed, Pelletized feed, Growth performance. Introduction The consistent production of freshwater ornamental fish has been hampered by the scarcity of suitable live feed for rearing the larval stages of fishes at different developmental stages. The use of cow dung, chicken dropping, horse manure, rice bran and mineral fertilizer used for culturing zooplankton was encouraged by Rottmann et al. (2003). However, from Indian context still mass culture of locally available live food organisms has not been adequately studied for their production and as a consequence larval rearing of ornamental fish in hatcheries mostly depended on zooplankton collected from natural water bodies. In Aquaculture, fish larvae are fed on two or three different sized zooplanktonic organisms during the initial 10-30 days of exogenous feeding and these organisms mostly include rotifers, copepods and cladocerans (Hagiwara et al. 2001; Mehrajudin war and Altaff, 2010; Santhanam and Perumal, 2012). Rotifers as initial starter live feed, serves as a living capsule, providing the nutritional required by the fish larvae for proper development. The incidental choice of rotifers as food for early developmental stages of small-mouthed larvae has therefore, been proven a success (Hagiwara et al.2001). The rotifer, Brachionus plicatilis is suitable live feed for the first feeding in fish larval rearing due to small size, slow swimming and high nutritional values which promote the growth and survival(Santamaría and Santamaría, 2011; Altaff and Janakiraman, 2013). Raising freshwater Brachionus calyciflorus in culture system has been examined for freshwater, edible and ornamental fish species (Isiket al.1999: Hagiwara et al. 2001). The culture of fresh water rotifer species has not yet had same impact on aquaculture as that of the marine species B. plicatilis(Støttrup, 2003).Copepods have been used to rear the larvae and fry of finfish and shellfish (Luis et al. 2010) and are also more advantageous as an initial feed in fish larviculture (Phelps et al. 2005; Santhanam and Perumal, 2012).The cladoceran, Ceriodaphnia retculata is preferred Available online at http://www.urpjournals.com International Journal of Research in Fisheries and Aquaculture Universal Research Publications. All rights reserved