APPLICATION OF ARTIFICIAL FEED WITH DIFFERENT PROTEIN CONTENT ON BLACKSADDLED CORAL GROUPER Plectropomus laevis NURSERY
<p><em>Blacksaddled coral grouper <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Plectropomus</span> <span style="text-decoration: underline;">laevis</span> is an export commodity and possess high economic value in Asian markets, but the wild population </em><em>is </em><em>already threatened. The purpose of this study was to determine the best food for improv</em><em>ing</em><em> growth and survival rate. The nursering were conducted using 9 fiberglass tanks with 1 m<sup>3</sup> of volume for 6 month, with three treatment and 3 replicates. Three different foods were used as treatments, i.e.: Local com</em><em>m</em><em>ersial pellet with </em><em>crude </em><em>protein content 50% (A), im-port com</em><em>m</em><em>ersial pellet with </em><em>cure </em><em>protein content 55% (B) and trash fish (sardine) (C). The initial size</em><em> o</em><em>f blacksaddled coral grouper seed were 2.5 cm total lengths (TL), 0.45 g body weight (BW). The stocking density of fry was reared at 250 fish per m<sup>3</sup>. A complete random design was used as an experiment design. Data was analysed using ANOVA statistics. Feeding times were twice a day at 08.00 and 15.00 local time; wit</em><em>h</em><em> dose at satiation. The samplings of fry were conducted every 15 day to measure of survival rate</em><em> </em><em>(SR), TL and BW. On the end of experiment was calculated economic ana-lized (BC ratio). The result show</em><em>ed</em><em> that there was significant different (P<0.05) among trea</em><em>t</em><em>ments for </em><em>SR </em><em>and growth</em><em> rate (GR)</em><em>. The better </em><em>SR </em><em>and GR</em><em> </em><em>was at treatment B with SR 96.5%, and GR 0.75g/day followed by treatment C (SR 90.5%: GR 0.54g/day) and treatment A (SR 81.5%: GR 0.42g/ day. The food conversion ratio was 1.15 in treatment A, 1.02 in B and 4.81 (wet weight) in C. From economic analized showed that the best BC ratio was in pellet 55% protein (B), followed by trash fish (C) and pellet 50% protein (A) with BC ratio of 1.75, 1.72 and 1.41 respectively. </em></p>