ANITA BHATNAGAR* AND PRAGATI RATHI
Department of Zoology, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra-136 119 (Haryana), India
*(e-mail : anitabhatnagar@gmail.com)
(Received : October 24, 2019; Accepted : December 21, 2019)
ABSTRACT
To combat the ever increasing demand of animal protein and to mitigate the problems emerged due to use of antibiotics in aquaculture to treat pathogenic infections and enhance survival, there is an immediate need to search alternatives to antibiotics such as non-pathogenic micro-organisms or probiotics for improving growth and immunity of fish. Therefore, the aim of present study was to evaluate the effect of autochthonous probiotic bacterium, Aneurinibacillus aneurinilyticus on growth performance and hematological parameters of Labeo calbasu and to determine its optimum dose. A total of 375 early fingerlings were divided into five treatment groups (T0-T4 of 25 early fingerlings per treatment group) in triplicate. In T0, fish were fed on a basal diet without probiotic bacterium. The probiotic bacterium, A. aneurinilyticus, isolated from the gut of L. calbasu was included in the basal diets of T1–T4 at varying concentrations i. e. T1 (1000 CFU/g), T2 (2000
CFU/g), T3 (3000 CFU/g) and T4 (4000 CFU/g) of feed and was fed at 4% of the body weight for 90 days. Growth performance, carcass composition and hematological parameters were estimated. Studies revealed significant (P<0.05) increase in growth performance, protein and lipid content and hematological parameters in T3 group fingerlings in comparison to other diets indicating that 3000 CFU/g is the optimum dose of A. aneurinilyticus at which better results can be achieved. Hence, it can be concluded that the incorporation of autochthonous probiotics in the fish feed at optimum level lead to better growth and health of fish and can replace prohibited use of antibiotics for sustainable aquaculture.
Key words : Aneurinibacillus aneurinilyticus, growth, immunity, Labeo calbasu, optimum dose