Background: Fish farming requires proper water quality to increase productivity and reduce health risk exposures while they are emission sources in rivers themselves. The purpose of this research is to evaluate river water quality regarding physicochemical parameters coupling with water quality index (WQI) to study the viability of fish farming expansion.
Methods: This study is carried out both as field survey and laboratory analysis. Samples were taken bimonthly in 6 periods (2016-2017) from 21 stations from Kabkian River, Iran, including the water body and discharge points. Afterwards, results were statistically analyzed by T-Test regarding the spatial and temporal specifications with SPSS.
Results: Experimental results show that dissolved oxygen is over 7 mg/L and WQI is 70 which is classified as good. However, temporal variations of BOD, COD and nitrite concentrations are significant and their average are rather high about 10, 16 and 0.14 mg/L, respectively. Since, BOD is the only parameter with significant spatial variations, it is introduced as the main parameter for river water quality monitoring.
Conclusion: Overally, Kabkian water quality is suitable for fish farming. However, due to the possibility of presence of malachite green, it is highly recommended that strict monitoring should be implemented upstream to control fish farm discharges and reduce health risk exposures.