A purified diet and a practical feed for the prawn Penaeus indicus

In the context of the rapid development in Penaeid prawn farming in India, nutritional research and the development of compounded feeds for feeding prawns have gained considerable importance. With the objective of evolving a reference purified diet for use in nutritional studies and a practical feed for feeding prawns, a purified diet and a practical feed were formulated based on the available information on the nutritional requirements of penaeid prawns. While the purified diet was made up of egg albumen, mixed carbqhydrate, cod liver oil, vitamins and minerals, the practical feed consisted of locally available raw materials, prawn waste, mantis shrimp, fish meal, groundnut cake and tapioca. The diet and the feed were fed to the juveniles of the prawn Pewus indicus for 100 days in the laboratory experiments and the results were compared with that of a conventional prawn feed, clam meat. The practical feed produced significantly (P < 0.05) the highest increase in length (72.2 mm) and live weight (4.69 g), followed by the clam meat (63.7 mm in length and 4.42 g in live weight) and the purified diet (54.7 mm in length and 3.83 g in live weight). 'Lhe food conversion ratio obtained by the practical feed was the lowest (1.8) followed by clam meat (2.09) and the purified diet (2.37), though the differences were dot statistically significant (P > 0.05). The possibilities of using the purified diet as the standard reference diet for nutritional studies in this region and the practical feed for the culture of penaeid prawns in the nursery and grow-out ponds are discussed