CAGE FISH CULTURE OF MIXED SEX NILE TILAPIA (OREOCHROMIS NILOTICUS) WITH DIFFERENT STOCKING DENSITY IN DANDA RIVER

Author:
Jeevan Rijal, Prabesh Pandit, Deepa Bhatt, Shailesh Gurung and Ram Bhajan Mandal

Doi: 10.26480/mahj.02.2025.53.58

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

ABSTRACT

A field experiment was conducted to detect the growth performance of mixed sex Nile tilapia (Oreochromisniloticus) at different stocking density in Danda River, Rupandehi in 1m3 caged culture for 90 days. The experiment was conducted in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with four treatments replicated thrice. The treatments were: Treatment-1, Treatment -2, Treatment-3 and Treatment-4 containing 10, 20, 30 and40 fish/m3 respectively. The mean stocked weight of tilapia fingerling in each treatment was 11.31g, 10.93g,10.23g and 10.10g, respectively. The feed containing 35% CP was supplied at the rate of 5% of body weight in initial month followed by 3% in the latter two months. Fish were fed twice daily at morning 9AM and next at evening 4PM. In this 90-day study, the study results indicated that Treatment T2 was significantly more effective than the other treatments in several key performance metrics (p<0.05). T2 exhibited the highest mean weight gain at 76.32g, significantly greater than T1 (69.83g), T3 (67.80g), and T4 (63.36g). Additionally,T2 recorded the highest daily weight gain at 0.84g, which was significantly greater than the gains in T1(0.77g), T3 (0.75g), and T4 (0.70g). The survival rate in T2 was the highest at 90.00%, while T4 had the lowest survival rate at 70.67%, with these differences being statistically significant (p<0.05). In terms of total production, T4 achieved the highest production at 2078.34±22.75g, which was significantly higher than the production in T1 (480.48±24.57g) (p<0.05). Although T4 led in gross return at 235.42, the net return was highest in T2 at 61.70, with this being significantly different from the net returns in T1 (9.03) and T4 (2.59)(p<0.05). Additionally, the benefit-cost ratio (BCR) was also highest in T2, significantly outperforming T1, T3,and T4 (p<0.05). These findings suggest that 20 fish/m3 is the most effective treatment for enhancing growth performance, production, and economic returns in Tilapia fish farming.