VPP 322: Aquatic Animal Diseases, Health Care and Management (1+1)

INTRODUCTION

• This chapter describes the breeding and larval rearing methods adopted for food fishes and ornamental fishes. Availability of required quantity of fish seed of desired species is one of the most important pre-requisite for successful fish farming. The widely cultured Indian major carps in inland waters like catla (Catla catla), rohu (Labeo rohita), mrigal (Cirrhinus mrigala), calbasu (Labeo calbasu) and Chinese carps such as silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix), big head (Aristichthys nobilis), grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella) and mud carp (Cirrhina molitirella) normally do not breed in confined waters.
• The Indian major carps do spawn in the specialised environments of bunds (special type of ponds, both wet and dry) where lot of rain water is accumulated during monsoon period. Under such circumstances the fish culturists had to depend for the fish seed on collection from river systems and the collected fish seed consisted of not only of desired species, but also of uneconomic species including predators. Induced breeding or hypophysation is followed to induce the fishes to breed with the extraneous hormones such as pituitary extract or synthetic hormones. The first success in inducing the Indian major carps was achieved in 1957 (Chaudhuri and Alikunhi, 1957).