Effect of dietary lipid levels on growth and carcass composition of Ompok pabda (siluridae) fry

An 80-day experiment was conducted to study the lipid requirement of Ompok pabda fry (mean body weight 0.96±0.03g). The diets contained fish meal, soybean meal, corn powder, sunflower oil, fish oil and vitamin mineral mixture.The lipid level in diets was 4.5 (D-1), 6.5 (D- 2), 8.6 (D-3) and 10.6 (D4)%.The growth study with different lipid levels revealed that the net weight gain and specific growth rate (SGR) of fry were significantly higher (P<0.05) on diet D-2, and variation between diets D-2 and D-3 was not significant. Feed conversion ratio (FCR) was lower (P<0.05) on diets D-2, D-3 and D-4 than on diet D-1. Protein efficiency ratio (PER) and survival (%) did not differ significantly among diets. Carcass protein content of fry was higher (P<0.05) on diet D-2 and it did not differ significantly with those on diet D-3. However, carcass composition of O. pabda did not differ significantly among diets. Thus, it may be concluded that lipid requirement of O. pabda was 6.5% with protein:energy ratio of 27.22 g MJ−1.