GROWTH PERFORMANCE OF NILE TILAPIA Oreochromis niloticus IN PLASTIC POND WITH DIFFERENT STOCKING DENSITY

Tilapia is a very popular fish to culture in Indonesia. Tilapia are also among the easiest and most profitable fish to culture. However, some regions in Indonesia face some difficulties to culture tilapia since high porosity of land or soil.  Plastic pond culture system offers the promising solution of this problem. Up to present, the information about tilapia culture in plastic pond was very limited. The present study aimed to investigate the growth performance of nile tilapia Oreochromis niloticus on plastic pond with different stocking density.

This study was conducted in Pacitan region, West Java from June - August 2015. A completely randomized design (CRD) was used with three different densities: A (10 fish/m²), B (15 fish/m²) and C (20 fish/m²), each treatment had three replicates. BEST (Bogor Enhanced Strain Tilapia) with initial weight 49.2±2.65 gram  were reared in plastic ponds for 60 days. Parameters analyzed on this study were weight growth, specific growth rate, total biomass and survival rate.

The results showed that the highest weight growth was 81.2±46.34 gram on 10 fish/m² density and it was not significantly different compared with others. While, specific growth rate was also not significantly different between treatment.

The highest total biomass was 128.3±27.50 kg on 20 fish/m² density and showed significantly different with other stocking density. Oreochromis niloticus survival rate on 20 fish/m² density was the highest and showed significantly different with other density. The optimum density was on C treatment (20 fish/m²)