Background:
In freshwater ornamental fish culture, a major challenge is formulating a common cost-effective feed suitable for rearing the candidate species. Depending on the size and type of the fish, the feed formulation should be able to supplement the nutritional requirement of these fishes. The fish feed is prepared from locally available materials for feeding ornamental fishes which gives better growth performance and color improvement in freshwater ornamental fishes. The feed is prepared considering the nutritional requirements of the fish (moisture, crude protein, crude lipid, crude fibre, gross energy and ash content). All the necessary feed ingredients such as groundnut oil cake, fish meal, prawn meal, wheat bran, vegetable oil, mineral-vitamins were obtained from local market. These ingredients were dried, pulverized, mixed, steam cooked and pelletized. Further, these pellets were dried and stored in airtight containers.
Technology Details:
The fish feed is a sinking type pellet (5-10 minutes for complete sinking, water stability of 30-45 minutes) which is suitable for rearing fish in community aquarium tanks, FRP tanks, and cement tanks. This can be used for most of the common freshwater ornamental fishes. The pellets are fed to ornamental fishes @ 1-6 pellets on the basis of size/type of the fish. The feed can be packed properly (vacuum) and stored at room temperature in a dry place (5-6 months).