Assessment of Culture Fisheries in Village Ponds: a Study in District Hisar, Haryana, India

Present communication deals with the study of four village fish culture ponds (two wild and two managed ponds) from district Hisar of Haryana, India was undertaken, to correlate the water quality and biological cycles in ponds with fish production. Studies have revealed that the ponds are in good trophic status. Chlorides, total hardness, calcium, magnesium, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), phosphates (o-PO₄) and ammonia were high whereas dissolved oxygen and fish growth/ yield was low in wild ponds in comparison to managed ponds. This may be due to high organic loads. The net primary productivity mg C L/d was high in the wild ponds in comparison to the managed ponds. And thus high fish growth /yield are not directly related with net primary productivity. The deterioration of water quality, as indicated by very high ammonia and BOD in wild ponds might have decreased the fish growth.On the other hand, grazing pressure might have decreased the Net Primary Productivity (NPP) but resulted in the high fish biomass. Thus, fish production appear to depend to lesser degree on the magnitude of primary production and therefore, universal relation between primary productivity and fish production could not be established and a variety of factors like organic load, ammonia production, nature/quantity of fertilizers influence such correlations. Management of water quality by managing the optimization of waste input in village ponds may help in enhancing the fish production through such small scale aquaculture.

Keywords
Water quality, Physico-chemical characteristics, Fish yield, BOD, Ammonia, Fish