PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF TROPICAL AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE

This study looked at a settling pond at an ex-silica mine located in Sukabumi, Indonesia. The settling pond was built in order to reduce the effect of acid mine drainage. Acid mine drainage is the main pollutant at the open pit mining and it can contaminate aquatic biota. In order to utilise the settling pond, ornamental fish was cultured. The objective of this research was to analyse the possibility of aquaculture for ornamental fish in the settling pond ex-silica mining area. For this purpose, three species of ornamental fish of koi carp (Cyprinus carpio), gold fish (Carassius auratus) and comet carp (Carassius auratus auratus) at the settling pond were compared with control pond outside the mining area. We measured their specific growth rate and survival rate for 10 weeks. Results showed that specific growth rate indicated by length and weight for all species was higher at the settling pond compared with the control pond. In contrast, the survival rate percentage of all the three species was higher than those of the control pond, i.e. 48.5-93 % at the settling pond vs. 94.5-96% at the control pond. Meanwhile, the specific growth rate of weight was 0.92-1.88 % day^-1 at the settling pond and 0.34-0.61 % day^-1 at the control pond, while the length was 0.70-1.02 % day^-1 at the settling pond and 0.31-0.63 % day^-1 at the control pond. These indicated that the three species of ornamental fish can be cultured at the settling pond even at low survival rate condition.