The effect of copepod enriched-vegetable based diet on giant tiger prawn (Penaeus monodon) post-larvae

Plankton is the primary food sources for many fish larvae as well as other organisms during their early stage of development. Zooplankton such as copepods play a major role in freshwater and marine environment as live food that offer great variety of sizes, species and nutritional value to the larvae. The aim of this study is to increase the nutritional value of copepod and its effect on Penaeus monodon post-larvae growth performance. The experiment was carried out 30 days and comprised with four different treatments of diets. The diets fed to copepod consisted of algal diet which is Tetraselmis sp. that acted as a control followed by three types of vegetable-based diet which is carrot, water spinach, and lettuce. The efficiency of the copepods enriched was further evaluate on its growth, survival and proximate composition. The outcome of the study showed that highest specific growth rate (SGR) in P.monodon post-larvae was obtained when fed with copepods enriched water spinach (11.28±0.38%) and the highest survival rate of P.monodon was obtained when being fed with copepods enriched Tetraselmis sp. (91.67±0.29%). Proximate analysis composition for enriched copepods and P.monodon fed with enriched copepods showed the water spinach produce highest protein and lipid content compared to other enrichment. The current result showed that vegetable based are able to replace the microalgae, hence it also can gave an advantages to the economy in aquaculture and higher yields

Positive and negative effects of COVID-19 pandemic on aquatic environment: a review

In December 2019, a novel coronavirus called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak was reported for the first time in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. This coronavirus has been referred as Coronavirus Disease 2019 or COVID-19 by World Health Organization (WHO). The spread of COVID-19 has become unstoppable, infecting around 93.5 million people worldwide, with the infections and deaths still increasing. Today, the entire planet has changed due to the greatest threat on the planet since the introduction of this lethal disease. This pandemic has left the world in turmoil and various measures have been taken by many countries including movement control order or lockdown, to slow down or mitigate the infection. Since the lockdown has been implemented almost in all affected countries, there has been a significant reduction in anthropogenic activity, including a reduction in industrial operations, vehicle numbers, and marine-related activities. All of these changes have also led to some unexpected environmental consequences. As a result of this lockdown, it had a positive and negative impact on the environment including the aquatic environment. Hence this review will therefore focus on the good and bad perspectives of the lockdown toward the aquatic environment

Spatiotemporal variation of tintinnid microzooplankton (Ciliophora: tintinnina) from Sarawak inshore water, South China Sea

Unraveling planktonic community patterns and their linkage with the surrounding ecology is essential for aquatic resource management. Studies on the tintinnid microzooplankton in most of the marine waters of Malaysian South China Sea (SCS) are scarce though the trophic role of this community is well established. Thus, we aimed to investigate on spatiotemporal pattern of composition, abundance, and biomass of tintinnid, and how this community patterns are regulated with the basic ecological parameters. A total of 46 species were recorded, mostly in southwest monsoon (33 species) during the study period from May 2016 to April 2017. Tintinnopsis was counted as major genera with 19 species, and Tintinnopsis radix, a species that reported as neritic-estuarine origin calculated as the most abundant (11%) in our study. Both the space and time were equally responsible for differences in species richness, diversity, abundance, and biomass. However, species richness variation was not influenced by space–time interaction, whereas we observed season (time) and species size worked as a strong factor in terms of biomass variations. Accordingly, the higher mean abundance (Station 3; 132,116 ind m−3 in southwest monsoon) did not scale up to the bigger mean biomass (Station 4; 1.317 µgC L−1 in Inter-monsoon April). Among the ecological variables, the strongest influence was observed in the tintinnid community by pH, dissolved oxygen and salinity mostly during southwest monsoon around Bintulu-Mukah areas. Similarly, species-specific affinity to pH was also observed by most of the species. In addition, Favella campanula showed affinity to salinity, turbidity, and conductivity, while T. cylindrica and T. gracilis were driven by the temperature and dissolved oxygen. The findings of this research may help to explore comprehensive food web dynamics in future ecosystem studies in SCS region

Spatiotemporal variation of tintinnid microzooplankton (Ciliophora: tintinnina) from Sarawak inshore water, South China Sea

Unraveling planktonic community patterns and their linkage with the surrounding ecology is essential for aquatic resource management. Studies on the tintinnid microzooplankton in most of the marine waters of Malaysian South China Sea (SCS) are scarce though the trophic role of this community is well established. Thus, we aimed to investigate on spatiotemporal pattern of composition, abundance, and biomass of tintinnid, and how this community patterns are regulated with the basic ecological parameters. A total of 46 species were recorded, mostly in southwest monsoon (33 species) during the study period from May 2016 to April 2017. Tintinnopsis was counted as major genera with 19 species, and Tintinnopsis radix, a species that reported as neritic-estuarine origin calculated as the most abundant (11%) in our study. Both the space and time were equally responsible for differences in species richness, diversity, abundance, and biomass. However, species richness variation was not influenced by space–time interaction, whereas we observed season (time) and species size worked as a strong factor in terms of biomass variations. Accordingly, the higher mean abundance (Station 3; 132,116 ind m −3 in south- west monsoon) did not scale up to the bigger mean biomass (Station 4; 1.317 μgC L −1 in Inter-monsoon April). Among the ecological variables, the strongest influence was observed in the tintinnid community by pH, dissolved oxygen and salinity mostly during southwest monsoon around Bintulu-Mukah areas. Similarly, species-specific affinity to pH was also observed by most of the species. In addition, Favella campanula showed affinity to salinity, turbidity, and conductivity, while T. cylin- drica and T. gracilis were driven by the temperature and dissolved oxygen. The findings of this research may help to explore comprehensive food web dynamics in future ecosystem studies in SCS region