The effect of enriched Artemia sp. on growth, nutritional composition, and survival performance of Macrobrachium rosenbergii (giant freshwater prawn)

Artemia sp.or the brine shrimp is essential in commercial hatchery operations for young fish and prawns as a live feed. Artemia is popular due to its availability and easy handling. However, Artemia is costly to enrich. This study aims to find Artemia’s best enrichment by observing Macrobrachium rosenbergii or giant freshwater prawns’ survival rate, growth rate, and nutritional composition after being fed with different enriched Artemia. This study was conducted for 30 days using four diets with three replicates per diet for the enriched Artemia. The diets of Artemia consisted of the microalgae  Isochrysis sp. as the control, fish bones extract (FE), green mustard, and palm kernel cake (PKC). The survival rate and specific growth rate (SGR) of the post larvae M. rosenbergii fed on Artemia enriched with FE achieved the best performance with 92.00±1.80% and 6.19±0.02% respectively. Proximate analysis of enriched Artemia showed that FE resulted in the highest protein (59.63±0.01%) and lipid contents (13.89±0.86%). Proximate analysis of post-larvae M. rosenbergii also showed that those fed with Artemia enriched with FE has the highest protein content (56.93±1.72%) and the lipid content (11.15±1.95%). Therefore, it is highly recommended to use Artemia enriched with FE to feed the giant freshwater prawn. This enrichment will reduce Artemia's feeding costs since FE is easy to find and very cost-efficient yet nutrient-rich.