Olufeagba S.O.¹ , Raji A.² , Majumda K.C.³ , Ravinda K.³ , Okomoda V.T.¹

1. Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture, University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Nigeria
2. National Institute for Freshwater Fisheries Research, P.M.B. 6006, New Bussa, Niger State, Nigeria
3. Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Uppal Road, Habsiguda, Hyderabad 500 007, India
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Aquaculture, 2015, Vol. 5, No. 13   doi: 10.5376/ija.2015.05.0013
Received: 03 Apr., 2015    Accepted: 08 May, 2015    Published: 09 Jun., 2015

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Olufeagba S.O., Raji A., Majumda K.C., Ravinda K., and Okomoda V.T., 2015, Induced Breeding and Early Development of Stinging Catfish, Heteropneustes Fossilis (Bloch) (Siluridae), International Journal of Aquaculture, 5: 1-7 (doi: 10.5376/ija.2015.05.0013)

Induced breeding, embryogenic chronology and larva development of Heteropneustes fossilis were studied in this work. One sexually matured female was injected intramuscularly with dry carp pituitary gland suspension at 4 mg/ kg- of body weight. After a latency period of eight hours, the female was stripped while the male was sacrificed to remove the testes which were macerated to fertilize the eggs. Incubation was carried out at 27℃ and the different stages of embryo were photographed using a Nikon SMZ 800 binocular microscope. Hatching started 23.53 hrs after fertilization and the percentage hatchability was 97.5%. Hatchlings had a mean length of 2.5 mm and mean yolk diameter of 0.1 mm. The yolk was completely absorbed between the third and fourth day of hatching and exogenous feeding started on the fourth day of hatching. The mean percentage survival was 75%.

17 Heteropneustes fossilis; Cleavages; Ontogeny; Embryogenesis; Blastomeres; Hatchlings