OBSERVATION ON THE GROWTH PERFORMANCE OF GOLDFISH (Carassius auratus) REARED IN AQUARIUMS WITH DIFFERENT LEVELS OF VITAMIN C

Aurelia Nica, I. Vasilean, Adina Popescu

Abstract
   A 30 days experiment was conducted from 10 June to 10 July, 2015 into aquariums to evaluate the growth performance of goldfish (Carassius auratus) with different levels of vitamin C supplementation in diets. The size of experimental aquarium was 55 cm x 25 cm x 35 cm. There were three variants named Control (without vit. C), variant V1 (900 mg vit. C per kg feed) and variant V2 (1800 mg vit. C per kg feed). Each of the variants ran in duplicate. Feeding frequency in all variants was 3 times a day. For each variant 30 exemplars of 3 month age with initial weight of 0, 97 g were stocked. Within the experimental period, the fish were fed at the rate at 10% of their body weight and decreased progressively with increasing body weight. The effects of feeding through vitamin C in different proportions on the parameters such as growth in view of live weight, survival rate, feed conversion, specific growth rate, protein efficacy for the Carassius auratus were studied. Results revealed that the growth and dietary utilisation were observed to be greater in variant V1 which contained 900 mg vit C per kg diet followed by V2 variant which contained 1800 mg vit C per kg diet describing clearly the role of a C vit in the diet for growth and feed utilisation. Lowest growth and dietary utilisation was observed in Control variant.

Key words: Carassius auratus, vitamin C, growth, aquariums