Teklay Gebru Tikue*, Kassaye Balkew Workagegn, Natarajan P, Belayneh Daniel
Phytoplankton groups are the major food items of herbivores fish species and plays a key role in the productivity of water bodies. With this in mind the major phytoplankton groups available in pond water was identified from December 2020 to March 2021 in Hawassa University. A total of 20 phytoplankton groups were identified during the study period. From those which were identified four were blue green algae (Cyanophyceae), seven Green algae (Chlorophyceae), six Diatoms (Bacillariophyceae), one Dinophyceae and two of them were Euglenophyceae. Among the phytoplankton groups Chlorophyceae were the dominant with a percentage contributions of 56% followed by Bacillariophyceae (23%), Cyanophyceae (17%) and Euglenophyceae (3%) while the least was dinophyceae (1%). The most frequently observed of an algal genus was Scenedesmus. In addition to these phytoplankton groups, three zooplankton groups were identified and those were Copepods (43%), Rotifers (31%) and Cladocerans (26%). Blue green algae, green algae and diatoms were the dominant phytoplankton groups identified in the pond water.