In the context of the rapid development in Penaeid prawn farming in India, nutritional research and the development of compounded feeds for feeding prawns have gained considerable importance. With the objective of evolving a reference purified diet and a practical feed were formulate based on the available information on the nutritional requirments of penaeid prawns. While the purified diet was made up of  egg albumen, mixed carbohydrate, cod liver oil, vitamins and minerals, the practical feed consisted of locally available raw materials, prawn waste, mantis shrimp, fish meal, groundnut cake and tapioca. The diet and the feed were fed to the juveniles of the prawn Penaeus indicus for 100 days in the laboratory experiments and the results were compared with that of a conventional prawn feed, clam meat. The practical feed produced significantly (P<0.05) the highest increase in length (72.2 mm) and live weight (4.69 g), followed by the calm meat (63.7 mm in length and 4.42 g in live weight) and the purified diet (54.7 mm in length and 3.83 g in live weight). The food conversion ratio obtained by the practical feed was the lowest (1.8) followed by clam meat (2.09) and the purified diet (2.37) though the differences were not statistically significant (P> 0.05). The possibilities of using the purified diet as the standard reference diet for nutritional studies in this region and the practical feed for the culture of penaeid prawns in the nursery and grow out ponds are discussed.