International Journal of Advanced Research and Development

Temperature is a factor which affects microbiological quality of feeds during their storage. Three storage temperatures of the feeds for fish were taken into account in this study: -11°C, 5°C and 20°C. Analyses comprised the survival of proteolytic, ammonifying, psychrophilic and mesophilic bacteria as well as fungi. It was found that after 72-day storage of fish feed at the three temperatures, fungi showed the highest survival (56% - 80%). As regards the four physiological groups of bacteria, the highest survival was observed for mesophilic bacteria (6.25% - 9.58%), followed by psychrophilic ones (2.5 - 3.25%) and ammonifiers (0.07 -0.11%), while proteolytic bacteria showed the lowest survival (0%). No live cells of the latter bacteria were observed after 64-day storage of the feed at -11 and 5°C, and after 72-day storage at 20°C.