Performance of olive barb, Puntius sarana (Hamilton) in fingerling rearing with rohu, Labeo rohita (Hamilton) and mrigal, Cirrhinus mrigala (Hamilton)

A 75 day fingerling rearing experiment of olive barb along with rohu and mrigal was conducted in concrete tanks of 50 m2 each to evaluate the compatibility and growth performance of the species. Combinations of rohu–mrigal (T-1), olive barb–rohu (T-2) and olive barb–mrigal (T-3) were the treatments evaluated in four replicates. Survival of rohu, mrigal and olive barb in treatments were 95.9 ± 0.9%, 97.1 ± 2.6% and 92.4 ± 2.5%, respectively and did not differ significantly. Olive barb and mrigal showed no significant difference in net weight gain and SGR between treatments irrespective of species combination. On the other hand, rohu recorded significantly higher net weight gain (4.85 ± 0.38 g) and SGR (3.63 ± 0.05% day− 1) in combination with olive barb in T-2 than that (3.57 ± 0.37 g, 3.25 ± 0.06% day− 1) with mrigal in T-1. The overall species-wise net weight gain in olive barb (4.74 ± 0.43 g) was at par with rohu (4.21 ± 0.77 g), while both of them performed significantly better than mrigal (3.24 ± 0.66 g). Further, significantly higher net biomass gain in T-2 with rohu–olive barb combination over the other two treatments suggested the compatibility of the former two species and possibility of incorporating olive barb with Indian major carps in fingerling rearing system.