EARLY STUDY: THE EFFECT OF TAURINE ON GROWTH OF GOURAMI (Osprhonemus goramy) AND TILAPIA (Oreochromis niloticus) JUVENILES

Abstract

<p>Taurine in diet affected increasing in body weight and length as well as survival rate of juveniles or adults of many marine fishes. It is explained that taurine presumably increased in their ability to tolerate the hypertonicity of seawater as well as to improve their metabolism which leaded to induce maturation. In order to elucidate the effect of taurine physiological universally in the fishes, early study was conducted on freshwater fishes namely gourami (Osprhonemus goramy) and tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus). The growth was determined by their body weight and morphological changes included the length and width of their body. The reproductive status was determined by measuring fish gonadosomatic indexes (GSI) (only for tilapias). Eight experimental groups were chosen consisted of two groups with commercial fish food with and without taurine and two groups with natural fish food (consisted of 50% Xanthosoma sagittifolium) with and without taurine. Amount of taurine given was 0.4 mg/fish/day. Complete randomized design with factorial 2x2 was applied to this study with 40 gourami juveniles (@ 7 grams in weight) and 40 tilapias (@ 50 grams in weight) were used for the experimental units. The study was conducted in 2 months. Analysis variances and LSD and/or t-test at 5% were used to determine the differences among experimental groups. The results indicated that taurine groups increased their body weight for 25-66% compared to the control (no taurine) as well as their body length and width (p&lt; 0.05). Yet, the GSI of tilapias was not shown any significantly different. In this early study we indicated that taurine affected the growth in juvenile gourami and tilapia. However, further experiments related with physiological changes and reproductive status was still needed to complete the study. </p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: Taurine, gourami, tilapia, growth rate</p>