EFFECT OF DIFFERENCES IN THE PERIOD OF LIVE FEED TRANSITION TO FERMENTED MANUFACTURED DIET ON THE SURVIVAL AND GROWTH OF THE SNAKEHEAD LARVAE (CHANNA STRIATA)

Abstract

ABSTRACT First feeding on snakehead fish larvae plays an important role to the success of snakehead fish hatchery. Artemia is a live feed that is easily digested by snakehead fish larvae and provides high survival, but it has relatively expensive prices. While pellet feed has low digestibility towards the larvae of snakehead fish, but it is priced at best. Increasing feed digestibility can be done by adding probiotic through the fermentation process. Experiments to acquaint manufactured diet which are fermented early on snakehead fish larvae through transition from live feed need to be performed to reduce the dependence of snakehead fish larvae on Artemia. The study used the Complete Random Design (RAL) with 5 treatments and 3 replications. Treatment A: transition on day 10, treatment B: transition on day 15, treatment C: transition on day 20, treatment D: only fermented manufactured feed and treatment E: only Artemia. The results showed that the transitions made to the 20-day-old snakehead fish larvae were better than the transitions made to the snakehead fish larvae with 10 and 15 days of age with a survival average of 83.33%, an absolute length growth of 2.03 cm and an absolute weight growth of 5.13 grams. KEY WORDS Snakehead fish, survival, growth, live feed, manufactured diet