RESEARCH ARTICLE Survival and Growth Rate of Larval Ompok pabda (Hamilton- Buchanan, 1822) of Tripura, India: Related to Efficient Feed S. Banik • Samir Malla Received: 25 March 2014 / Revised: 5 May 2014 / Accepted: 15 May 2014 Ó Zoological Society, Kolkata, India 2014 Abstract Mass larval population of the captive bred stock of Ompok pabda was reared successfully for the first time in India. In order to evaluate the increase of survival and growth rate of the larvae, an ex-situ experiment was continued for about 28 days with the supply of different types of food by maintaining the water quality at standard level (water veloc- ity = 1.01 - 1.26 m/s, temperature = 24.0 - 29.5 °C, DO 2 = 4.8 - 6.4 ppm, CO 2 = 1.2 - 2.9 ppm, pH = 7.3 - 8.5, DOM = 0.94 - 2.23 ppm and HCO 3 = 120 -176 ppm) under a specific cycling water-flow system to the larvae. The experiment revealed significantly higher (91.72 %, r = 0.987, P \ 0.01) survival and growth rate of the larvae, when zooplankton along with tubifex were offered as feed. The impact of other feeds such as tubifex (72.28 %, r = 0.822, P \ 0.05), zooplankton (73.42 %, r = 0.762, P \ 0.05), egg custard (56.80 %) and compound feed (34.28 %) were gradually less. Specific growth rate (SGR = 6.39 ± 0.58) was also highest in the larvae fed with zooplankton plus tubifex as feed. The said feed was also effective to increase the body weight at a maximum level. Therefore, the feed prepared through the use of mass cultured zooplankton and tubifex seems to be suitable under specific rearing system to promote aquaculture. Keywords Rearing technology  Ompok pabda larvae  Growth rate  Survival rate Introduction Ompok pabda (Hamilton-Buchanan, 1822) is an indigenous catfish of lotic water body. In nature, it breeds in freshwater (Banik and Malla 2009). It has a market value because of its palatability. It occurs in rivers, lakes, floodplains and wetland as well. Geographically this species is distributed in India, Bangladesh, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Laos, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Malaya, Myanmar, Pakistan, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam (Jayaram 1999; Sarkar et al. 2005; Banik and Malla 2009; Banik 2010a, b; Banik et al. 2012). During 1970 the genus Ompok had largely been available in North-Eastern states, North Bihar and in West Bengal. Since 1980, a gradual decline of Ompok spp. population has been noted because of degradation of limnological conditions of the lotic water ecosystem (Bhowmik et al. 2000; Lakra et al. 2010; Banik et al. 2011, 2012; Banik and Bhattacharya 2012a, b). Several workers (Chakrabarti et al. 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009; Banik and Malla 2009; Sarkar et al. 2008, 2010, Banik and Saha 2013) pointed out that the drastic population decline is a result of several anthropogenic activities like indiscriminate fishing during breeding season and the introduction of exotic fish species etc. It has been listed as an endangered species as per IUCN criterion due to reduced abundance and restricted distribution (Brown 1957; Chandi 1970; Shaha 1971; Banerji and Prasad 1974; Lovell and Stickney 1977; Boyd 1982; Dabrowski 1984; Dabrowski et al. 1987; IUCN 1990; Marte et al. 1991; Kestemont and Statmans 1992; Kohinoor et al. 1995; Mgaya and Mercer 1995; CAMP 1998; Mollah et al. 1998; Siddiqua et al. 2000; Mukherjee and Das 2001; Mukherjee et al. 2002; CAFF 2006; Hussain 2006; Lakra et al. 2010). As a potential fish species in aquaculture Ompok has attracted considerable interest. But farming technology is S. Banik (&)  S. Malla Aquaculture Research Unit, Department of Zoology, Tripura University (a Central University), Suryamaninagar 799022, Tripura, India e-mail: sukbanik@rediffmail.com 123 Proc Zool Soc DOI 10.1007/s12595-014-0111-x T H E Z O O L O G I C A L S O C I E T Y K O L K A T A