Two experiments were conducted at Khon Kaen University, Nong Khai campus, Thailand during May to December 2015 to justify effects of chitosan of Experiment 1 on growth performance of rice-field crabs. The Experiment 1 had five chitosan treatments, i.e. 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4% (on dry matter basis). Experiment 2 had two treatments, i.e. the best treatment of Experiment 1 (T3) was chosen in comparison with flesh fish meat treatment. A Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with four replications was used for Experiments 1 and 2. The results of the Experiment 1 showed that a chitosan level of 2% of T3 gave significantly (p < 0.05) better growth performance on final weight gained, weight gained, average daily growth rate, specific growth rate and survival rate (%) of the rice-field crabs than the rest, except that of the feed conversion ratio where T1 (control) was the highest. Thus a chitosan level of 2% (T3) in the feed diet is recommended for rice-field crab culture. With the Experiment 2, the feed diet of T3 of Experiment 1, i.e. with 2% chitosan gave significantly (p < 0.05) higher survival rate (%) of rice-field crabs than the flesh fish meat of T1.
Chitosan, Esanthelphusa dugasti, Rice-field crab, growth performance.
© The Author(s) 2017. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.