Study on abiotic factors of water in the vicinity of marine cage culture in southern coast of the Caspian Sea, Abbas Abad area.

This study was carried out to determine the effect of raibow trout cage culture on the abiotic factors of water in the Abbas Abad area, southern basin of the Caspian Sea. For this purpose, water samples were collected at distances of 5, 50, 100 and 1000 m from the cage culture during December 2014 to August 2015. Based on the results, it was shown that the mean value of water temperature for surface layer varied between 12.2 and 30.16 °C from December to August. The highest and lowest mean value of salinity obtained in August (11.26 g/l) and April (10.66 g/l) respectively. The range of pH value changes (8.36-8.83) was as small as the rate of electro conductivity variations (18.11-19.07 µs/cm). The highest concentration of dissolved oxygen was observed in December at 1000 m station (9.23 mg/l) and the lowest was seen in April at 5 m station (7.27 mg/l). Also the mean values of Total Dissolved Solids, Turbidity, Nitrite, Nitrate, ammonium, Total Nitrogen, Phosphate and Total Phosphorus was obtained 9.59 (g/l), 5.55 (NTU), 3.67, 133.45, 92.6, 929.72, 21.63, 37.73 (µg/l) respectively. The results of abiotic factors of water showed that most of the measured parameters had significant differences only among different sampling periods (p<0.05) whilst, for some factors such as dissolved oxygen, ion ammonium and phosphate, there were significant differences between different stations (The effect of distance from the cage) at each sampling period as well as (p<0.05). It seems that the cage culture of rainbow trout in the Abbas Abad area had only a minor impact on measured factors probably due to low stocking density, short-term of fish farm and high current velocity.