Comparative analysis of nutritional profiles of Moina macrocopa cultured in different media: An investigation into the effects of culture media on aquatic organism nutrition

Cladoceran Moina macrocopa is an important zooplankton for juvenile fish and crustacean, widely used as live feed in aquaculture. In this experiment, five different culture media denoted as mixed feed (Treatment-1), Chlorella (Treatment-2), Spirulina (Treatment-3), dried cattle (cow) manure (Treatment-4), and baker’s yeast (Treatment-5) was prepared to culture M. macrocopa. According to the proximate composition data, Spirulina and Chlorella enriched zooplankton found significantly with higher protein content and lower lipid content among all the treatment groups. While, Out of all the treatment groups, palmitic acid (C16:0) stood out as the most abundant saturated fatty acid (SFA) available. The poly unsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) found to be the highest (35.44±1.43%) in zooplankton enriched in Chlorella followed by gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) (C18:3n-6) in Spirulina medium. Besides, a maximum of 17 amino acids were present in Chlorella and Spirulina-treated M. macrocopa 56.74±2.10% and 51.72±1.73%, respectively. Arginine, Histidine, and Lysine were dominant between these two treatment groups. Among the non-essential amino acid (NEAA), Aspartic acid and asparagine acid found significantly higher in Baker’s yeast enriched M. macrocopa. Our results suggest that the Chlorella and Spirulina enriched treatment groups showed better findings on protein, lipid and fatty acid as well as essential amino acid content in M. macrocopa.