UNAIR NEWS – The prospect of fisheries and marine development in Indonesia is very promising because of its strategic position. The country which consists of 17,502 islands with a coastline stretches for 81,000 km makes it a country with approximately 5.8 million km 2 fishing area. Seaweed has become one of the main exported commodities of marine resources after tuna and shrimps.
Based on research data from Research Center of Product Processing and Social Economics of Marine and Fishery year 2002-2003, the amount of solid waste generated at carrageenan processing was 70-80%. From that abundant waste, four students of Faculty of Fisheries and Marine (FPK) Universitas Airlangga have conducted a research so the waste generated from Echeuma cottonii seaweed processing can provide added value and improve the economy significantly and support the growth of phytoplankton in the pond.
Four students of FPK Universitas Airlangga is Elki Andriyanto, Hafizha Millati Novanda, Dessy Nuraini, and Kautsar Senja. Under the guidance of his lecturer, Annur Ahadi Abdillah, S.Pi., M.Si., they wrote their research as a proposal entitled ” Micronutrient Optimization of Carrageenan ( Euchema cottonii )Solid Waste Extraction to Support Growth of Phytoplankton in Culture Pond”.
The proposal has passed the Dikti’s assessment so they obtained research funding from the Directorate of Higher Education (DIKTI) in 2016-2017 Exacta Research Student Creativity Program (PKM-PE) Kemenristekdikti.
Elki Andriyanto explained, the benefits of this research is to improve the wealth of local commodities and add value to unused waste of carrageenan processed seaweed as well as supporting the growth of phytoplankton in the swimming pond with the addition of natural fertilizer from solid waste carrageenan . When the phytoplankton in the pond grows well, then fish will have better survival and the use of expensive chemical fertilizers is reduced.
The tool used in this research is aquarium, small hose, aerator, bucket, cable socket, microscope, haemocytometer, refractometer, DO meter, pH meter, glass jar, aeration stone, dropper pipette, TL lamp, measuring cylinder, labels, heat-resistant plastic, plastic clips, fabrics, and analytic scales.
The materials used in this research are pond water, seaweed waste, aquades, chlorin, lugol, molasses, yellow em4 probiotics, and antichlorin. The procedure of this research is LPK micronutrient optimization method using fermentation with addition of molasses, yellow EM4 and aquades fermented for 24 hours. The study also used a complete randomized design (RAL) with 5 treatments (control, 0.25 ml / L, 0.50 ml / L, 0.75 ml / L, and 1.0 ml / L) with 4 repetitions observed for 7 days.
The research prioritized the utilization of waste result of carrageenan processing to create value product in the form of liquid fertilizer to support phytoplankton growth in the ponda.
The use of liquid fertilizer from LPK micronutrient showed that optimization at dose C (0,50 ml / L) is the best dose to support growth of phytoplankton . Phytoplankton identified in the culture pond is Chlorella sp, Volvox sp, Paramecium sp. These species are natural feed to fish in ponds. (*)
Editor: Bambang Bes
