Medicinal herbs have curative powers and are used in making medicines because of their healing properties. The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of dietary graded levels (0, 1, 2 and 3% kgG 1 diet) of both Dried Rocket (Eruca sativa) Leaves (DRL) or Seeds (DRS) on the growth performance, feed utilization, chemical composition of body and physiological parameters of all male monosex Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus fingerlings for 8 weeks in indoor feeding experiment. A total of 168 fish with average initial body weight 17.14±0.35 g were randomly distributed into eight treatments referred No. T 1 , T 2 , T 3 and T 4 for DRL and T 5 , T 6 , T 7 and T 8 treatments for DRS. Results revealed that T 4 and T 7 were the best treatments which were responsible for the significantly (p#0.05) increased growth performance, feed utilization, chemical composition of the whole fish body, blood hematological and biochemical parameters among all treatments. Dietary DRS gave the best results compared with DRL. Thus, it is recommended that the inclusion of 3% DRL (T 4 ) or 2% DRS (T 7 ) as feed additives of all male monosex O. niloticus are more useful for improving their growth performance, feed utilization, chemical composition of the whole fish body and physiological responses.
Dietary treatments:A Basal Diet (BD) was formulated from the local commercial ingredients namely, 22% fish meal, 27% soybean meal, 21% yellow corn, 20% wheat bran, 3% corn oil, 5% molasses and 2% vit. and min premix (each 1 kg premix contains; Vit. A, 12000,000 IU; Vit. D 3 , 3000,000 IU; Vit. E, 10,000 mg; Vit. K 3 , 3000 mg; Vit. B 1 200 mg; Vit. B 2 , 5000 mg; Vit. B 6 , 3000 mg; Vit. B 12 , 15 mg; Biotin, 50 mg; Folic acid 1000 mg; Nicotinic acid 35000 mg; Pantothenic acid 10,000 mg; Mn 80 g; Cu 8.8 g; Zn 70 g; Fe 35 g; I 1 g; Co 0.15 g and Se 0.3 g). However, the BD proximate chemical analysis (% on dry matter basis) was 89.89% Dry Matter (DM), 30.13% Crude Protein (CP), 4.42% ether extract, 11.91% ash, 53.54% total carbohydrate, 426.2 kcal 100/g DM Gross Energy (GE) and 70.69 mg CP kcalG 1 GE, P/E ratio.The ingredients and additives (leaves and seeds of E. sativa), were bought from the local market. The leaves and seeds of E. sativa were cleaned and shade-dried in a drying oven at 50°C for 72 h. DRL and DRS were milled into fine particle size (<250 μm) and kept in a dry, air-tight transparent plastic container. Feed ingredients were ground and the different ingredients mixed manually, then the experimental diets were pressed by manufacturing machine (pellets size 1 mm). Fish fed the diets at a rate of 3% of their live body weight daily, six days a week. Experimental diets were introduced manually twice daily, at 8.00 am and 14.00 pm. The amount of food was adjusted bi-weekly based on the actual body weight changes.