Compartive Evaluation of the colour Enchancement Potential of Different Pigment Sources of Plant Origin in the Goldfish Carassius auratus

Abstract- Attractive colouration is a decisive factor in determining the commercial value of oranamental fish. Gold fish (Carassius auratus) are in demand in world markets due to their attractive golden colour. The present study was designed to investigate the effect of three natural plant pigment sources (African tulip tree flower, red paprika, pomegranate peel) in the colour enhancement of goldfish, Carassius auratus. Commercially available feed was used as the base feed. The pigment sources of plant origin tested were African tulip tree flower (T1), red paprika (T2) and Pomegranate peel (T3), added @ 5%. The control feed (T0) was without any such additive. The fishes were fed with experimental feed ad libitum. The experiment was conducted for a period of 60 days. The average body weight gain of the gold fish fed the test diets was measured once in every 15 days, over the period of study. The final mean weight of gold fish in treatment T0 is 4.65g, 5.16g in treatment T1, 5.21g in treatment T2 and 5.13g in treatment T3. Fish fed the 5% red paprika (5.21g) feed recorded higher growth than other treatments. Survival rate was good in all the treatments with mean survival value ranging from 86.6% to 100%. The poorest FCR was obtained in the red paprika (1.54) feed and best FCR was obtained in the pomegranate peel (1.28) feed. Highest SGR was observed in the pomegranate peel diet (1.42) followed by red paprika (1.21), control (1.20) and African tulip flower (1.18) feed. The pigment concentration obtained in goldfish were high in red paprika fed {6.37µg/g (T2)} fishes when compared to other treatments are control. The present investigation indicated that among the diets tested, the diet containing 5% of red parika feed led to the maximum enhancement of colouration in goldfish.