Effect of treated quail dung on the growth performance of freshwater Microalgae

For decades, freshwater microalgae have been used in various fields for human food, animal feed, and fertilizer. In aquaculture industry, freshwater microalgae use as live feed for all growth stages of bivalve molluscs likes oysters or scallops, larval stages of abalone or some fish species and for zooplankton in aquaculture food chains. The purpose of the study is to compare the effect of treated quail dung (TQD) and the commercial fertilizer (NPK) on the growth performance of freshwater microalgae. The filtered pond water sample was added into six conical flasks which contained different concentrations of the fertilizer. The TQD was obtained from Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK). The concentrations of TQD were 3 g, 6 g, and 9 g while same concentrations of NPK fertilizer were used which acted as control treatment. The data were collected every morning for 7 days using the spectrophotometer at 650 nm. The statistical analysis of the optical density (OD) and the specific growth rate per day (SGR d-1) of the freshwater microalgae were done by using one-way ANOVA and post hoc Turkey test at p < 0.05. Based on the result obtained, treatment with TQD fertilizer had significantly higher peak OD at 1.27 ± 0.018 and SGR d-1 at 0.70 ± 0.016 of freshwater microalgae compared to NPK fertilizer. As a conclusion, TQD can be used as an alternative fertilizer in freshwater microalage cultivation in order to reduce the cost of cultivation.