anak ikan bantut

Salam to everybody,

I always heard from fellow aquaculturist about "ikan bantut" or stunted fish. For example, haruan that grow up to 200 grams after a year of culture or ikan puyu (anabas sp) that grow up to 80 gms only after a year. There are many factors that affected the development or growth of fish in captivity. Environment does play its role such as water quality, location of pond, density per sq meter of water, etc etc. As in other animal, genetic play a big role. At the same time, as in human, even when the mother and father is just average size, their off springs can be bigger and heavier. The different is in the quality and quantity of food.

Fish must be feed the right food of the right quantity and quality. Based on personal experiences, what the fish fry consumed determine the quality of the fry. What is the right food? It is good if we can give them what they normally have in the wild ie moina, daphnia, rotifer, copepode, etc. However, these by it self will not be enough since in the wild, only the toughest will survive ie 5-6 percent of the egg and in many cases and usually the carnivorous fish such as marble goby or wallago attu (tapah) maybe .05% will survice, while in the hatchery, we want all fry to survive and grow well.

The answer is to provide the fry with extra or formulated food. To buy commercially available food for fry and factor it into the selling price of fry in Malaysia, it will make it not a worth while exercise. The alternative is home made fortified formulated food. For me, the fish fry must have some basic ingredient in their food eventhough some variation will be needed to suit the biological requirement of different type of fish. All fish will need 1. protien to grow, 2. vitamin and mineral, and 3. carbohydrate and fat for energy. In the wild, item no 2 is what normally missing and this is the item that must be added to any formulated or unformulated food given to the fish. And for me who have no formal education in fishery, the most convenient way to fortified the for for the fry is using baby formula. Baby formula have all the vitamin and mineral needed by the fry to grow and survive into good healthy fish. You might add some fish oil in the form of scotch's fish emulation for good measure. Even for grow out of fish, vitamin and mineral for baby formula can be used as supplement as sometime, to buy the actual vitamin and mineral is quite expensive and difficult to get.

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