Periphyton and their Role in Aquaculture Industry

By : A. Anix Vivek Santhiya , P. Chidambaram

Page No: 91-100

Abstract
Aquaculture, especially commercial fish culture, is not always truly sustainable because of supply of external feeds, chemicals and energy inputs. In commercial fish culture, the demand of artificial feeds is met by processed pellets that are made of fishmeal, fish oil and grain. The knowledge of feeding preferences by fish on naturally available food is scientifically inadequate and farmers always tend to use supplementary feed to increase income per unit area. Such effort, in general, leads to detrimental effects on the aquatic environment. Cost of feed is one of the major expense in any fish culture operation as the profitability of whole practice remains intricately tied to it. Although formulated fish feeds are considered as the most balanced and suitable feed, because of the high cost, the farmers are now compelled or forced to searching for cheaper alternative protein sources of either animal or vegetable origin. The positive effect of substrate based biofilm or periphyton on the overall pond ecology along with the higher production supports low input cost involved in periphyton based ponds, makes it a reliable production system. The applicability of this new technology needs to be reviewed, taking into consideration on the improved farming benefits involved. The current approach to reduce the feed cost in aquaculture is the application of periphyton based system. Thus, the aim of the current paper is to highlight the important of periphyton in aquaculture industry.

Authors :
A. Anix Vivek Santhiya
Assistant Professor, Department of Aquaculture, Tamil Nadu Dr. J. Jayalalithaa Fisheries University, Tamil Nadu, India.

P. Chidambaram
Professor, Department of Aquaculture, Dr. M.G.R Fisheries College and Research Institute, Tamil Nadu, Dr. J. Jayalalithaa Fisheries University, Ponneri - 601204, Tamil Nadu, India.
 

DOI: http://doi.org/10.32381/JAT.2021.36.1-4.10