Anguchamy Veeruraj, Sampath Renuga Pugazhvendan, Thipramalai Thankappan Ajithkumar, and Muthuvel Arumugam. ToxicolRes 2016;32:215-23. https://doi.org/10.5487/TR.2016.32.3.215

Ornamental Fishery is one of the fast growing fisheries sector, for its increasing demands in world markets due to their attractive colour. Colouration is one of the essential supremacy qualities of the fish for consumer acceptability. Carotenoids are accountable for colouration of muscle in food fish and skin colour in ornamental fish. The present experiment was carried out to investigate the effect of three different natural feed supplements for the growth and survival rate in Demasoni Cichlids (Pseudotropheus demasoni). Totally 100 numbers of Demasoni Cichlids are equally distributed (10 fish in each tank) in ten different aquarium tanks and every 3 groups of cultural tanks were fixed with three different concentration of feed composition with remaining one fish tank as a control group. Four different treatments were selected for this present experiment with naturally obtained feed used as the base additive feed. Three different natural feed sources of raw materials tested were Dragon Fruit (Hylocereus undatus (Haw.), China Rose (Hibiscus rosasinensis L.) and Beetroot (Beta vulgaris L.), with an incorporation level of 7.5%, 10% and 12.5% respectively, including control feed without any natural feed additives. The total experiment was performed for a period of 60 days and all the fishes of each tank were fed with different feeds thrice a day. The preset study revealed that 12.5% of maximum value of crude protein was found in natural sources of dragon fruit could be incorporated in fish feed and it was expressed highest level of length and weight with 100% survival rates were found in each experimental tanks. The water quality parameters of all the experimental tanks were kept within the optimum range. The present result concluded that supplementation of incorporated Dragon Fruit, Beetroot and China Rose fish feed additives can successfully improve the growth and survival performance.