Theophile Godome^1,2 , Ephrem Tossavi¹ , Arnauld Djissou¹ , Yaovi Zounon¹ , Nahoua Issa Ouattara² , Emile Didier Fiogbe¹

1 Laboratoire de Recherches sur les Zones Humides, Departement de Zoologie, Faculte des Sciences et Techniques, Universite d’Abomey-Calavi, BP: 526 Cotonou, Benin
2 Laboratoire d’Hydrobiologie, UFR Biosciences, Universite Felix Houphouet-Boigny, 22BP: 582 Abidjan 22, Cote d’Ivoire
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Aquaculture, 2018, Vol. 8, No. 18   doi: 10.5376/ija.2018.08.0018
Received: 14 May, 2018    Accepted: 28 Jun., 2018    Published: 24 Aug., 2018

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.

Godome T., Tossavi E., Djissou A., Zounon Y., Ouattara N.I., and Fiogbe E.D., 2018, Effect of stocking density on the survival and growth of Hoplobatrachus occipitalis (Günther, 1858) (Amphibia: Dicroglossidae) of tadpoles reared in Ponds from Benin, International Journal of Aquaculture, 8(18): 137-144 (doi: 10.5376/ija.2018.08.0018)

 

Density is one of the important factors to be considered in frogs rearing. The current study aims to evaluate the effect of this parameter on the survival and growth of Hoplobatrachus occipitalis tadpoles in circular plastic ponds (Diameter: 24 cm; volume: 60 L) for 24 days. Four stocking densities (5, 10, 15 and 20 tadpoles/L), respectively represented by D₁, D₂, D₃, and D₄ were tested on tadpoles (initial mean weight 0.283 ± 0.031 g) in triplicate. Tadpoles were daily fed at 6% of biomass every hour from 8 a.m to 6 p.m on Coppens fish feed. At the end of experiment, parameters such as final biomass (9.386 ± 0.240 to 23.750 ± 0.601 g), specific growth rate (1.960 ± 0.326 to 4.220 ± 0.255%/d-1), daily weight gain (0.022 ± 0.021 to 0.735 ± 0.026 g/d), survival rate (30.388 ± 1.734 to 86.333 ± 3.333%) and feed conversion rate (1.436 ± 0.023 to 2.185 ± 0.218) showed the lowest values in the highest stocking densities. The final biomass, specific growth rate, daily weight gain and survival rate recorded in D₁ tadpoles were significantly higher (p˂0.05) compared to the other lots. Thus the optimal stocking density is 5 tadpoles/L to ensure a good growth of H. occipitalis tadpoles in circular ponds.

Hoplobatrachus occipitalis; Intensive rearing; Tadpoles; Stocking density