Assessing growth performance and survival of wild shad Tenualosa ilisha fry in two earthen ponds with different feeding regime: A new insight for conservation

The present study describes the rearing and growth performance of Hilsa (Tenualosa ilisha) fry in experimental trial performed in earthen pond ecosystem located adjacent to river Rupnarayan for developing in-situ rearing protocol of fry collected from the wild sources. The seed was collected during May, 2020 from the river and stocked in two different rearing ponds. One of the ponds was provided with artificial feed and another fed with chicken offal to raise the production of zooplankton. Routine monitoring of water and soil quality parameters as well as other biotic communities like plankton was performed to understand the dynamics of ecological conditions in relation to changes in length and weight. The results of PCA between sediment quality and specific growth of fish indicated the strong positive loading of available nitrogen, available phosphate and free calcium carbonate, while moderate positive loading was observed with percentage of silt. Interestingly, it is observed that survivability rate of fish was approximately 80% in both the ponds. The results indicated natural growth fish was considerably well in both the experimental ponds. However, higher growth of juveniles were observed in the pond 2 with higher phytoplankton density (9120cells/L) than pond 1 having lower phytoplankton density (920cells/L) at the end of the experiments. The water quality parameters were comparable in both the experimental ponds. Based on this study it is evident that plankton (especially zooplankton) has induced better growth in pond 2 and possible incorporation of live feed along with formulated feed might trigger better growth of the stocked Hilsa. The present study provides new insight in developing field based approaches for successful rearing and conservation of threatened Hilsa in Indian waters.