Ashaq Hussain Bhat and Samiea Hussein

The herbs and herbal products added to the feed cure many diseases, promote growth, reduce stress, improves some blood parameters and prevent infections in fish under culture. The addition of herbs and herbal products in fish diet is cheaper and environmentally friendly with low side effect to the fish and consumers. The effects of dietary medicinal herbs on growth was investigated in Schizothorax niger. The fish (mean body weight 160.0±0.8 g) were fed fishmeal diets supplemented with either Massa medicata (Mm) or Artemisia capillaries (Ac), or a mixture of both the herbs (Mix.) and a control diet without medicinal herbs, for 10 weeks. Survival, specific growth rate, feed efficiency, condition factor, Haematocrit levels and hemoglobin levels were higher in fish given herbal diets than fish given the control diet without herbs. Significantly higher serum high density lipoprotein-cholesterol level and lysozyme activity were detected in HM diet groups. However, significantly lower serum alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase activities were obtained in all herbal diet groups compared with the control diet group. The lowest survival was obtained in the control group. These results reveal that medicinal herbs in diets enhance growth of Schizothorax niger.

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