Effects of enzyme supplementation on growth and nutritional quality of thai pangas, pangasius hypophthalmus (Sauvage, 1878)

Abstract

The present study was carried out to evaluate the effects of enzyme supplementation on the growth performance and nutritional quality Thai Pangas, Pangasius hypophthalmus (Sauvage, 1878) for 60 days period from May 2015 to July 2015. The fingerlings were cultured in captive environment in eight flow-through plastic tanks (750L each) dividing them into 4 different treatment group. Aerator was used to ensure continuous aeration. Each tank was stocked with 15 fingerlings of Pangasius hypophthalmus. Four different types of enzymatically treated feed were used to conduct the experiment for each treatment groups. 3% enzyme mixed feed for Treatment-1, 4% enzyme mixed for Treatment-2, 5% enzyme mixed feed for Treatment-3 and feed without enzyme was used for Treatment-4 (control group). The level of enzyme was used as the experimental variable. Effects of enzyme supplementation on growth performances such as condition factor (k), average daily gain (ADG), specific growth rate (SGR), feed conversion ratio (FCR), viscerosomatic index (VSI), hepatosomatic index (HSI), flesh yield (FY) were studied with nutritional quality (moisture, ash, protein, and lipid)assessment. Result of the current study showed that, enzyme supplementation at a rate of 3% had significant positive effects on condition factor, SGR, FCR, VSI, FYand protein content while no significant differences were observed in ADG, HSI and ash content. However enzyme reduced moisture and lipid content at 3% rate but then increased with a dose dependent manner.Although from the study, it is found that enzyme supplementation has a very little impact on ADG, HSI, ash and lipid content, it can help in better feed production for commercially profitable aquaculture.