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¹ National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Alexandria Branch, Egypt
² Al-Azhar University, Faculty of Science, Cairo, Egypt DOI : 10.4194/1303-2712-v18_10_03 Viewed : 4448 - Downloaded : 4324 Aquaculture ecosystem assessment is a major key for successful aquaculture Planning. There are many aquaculture farms constructed in Egypt, but because of the non-sufficient studies about the environmental conditions of aquaculture ecosystem assessment, many projects achieved negative results and had low economical returns. The present study was conducted to evaluate the aquaculture ecosystem assessment of irrigation water of El-Mahmoudia Canal, Alexandria, Egypt. The result indicated that temperature (24.65±0.4°C), DO (5.38±0.20mg/l), COD (14.40±4.5mg/l) and BOD (2.86±0.20 mg/l) were in the optimum range for O. niloticus. Chlorophyll a, b and carotenoids were 10.449±0.953, 4.685±0.704 and 2.374±0.054 μg/g, respectively. The biochemical composition of plankton showed that protein, lipid and carbohydrate were 37.7±3.39 %, 16.33±0.85%, and 11.23±2.63%, respectively. Moreover, SFA, MUFA and PUFA were 70.29±4.07%, 11.172±0.132 %, and 18.55±0.525 % of total fatty acids, respectively. Zooplankton community showed that rotifers and copepods configured the main bulk of zooplankton community (95.9% to the total zooplankton community). These conditions are considered the ideal recommended conditions for cultivation of Oreochromis niloticus that started with 100,000 fingerlings (distributed as 4.76 fish/m3 of earth pond) for six months with 82% survival rate with final yield of 21.3 ton/1.6 hectare. Keywords : Aquaculture ecosystem, Tilapia, phytoplankton, zooplankton, fatty acids