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In the uplands of northern Vietnam, culture of grass carp contributes significantly to income and household food security of Black Thai farmers. Maize is one of the most important upland crops and barnyard grass is the most important weed in the paddy rice fields. Thus, these are frequently used by small‐scale fish farmers as fish feed. An 8‐week feeding trial was conducted simultaneously in a recirculation and in a respirometric system to determine the digestibility and metabolizability of the nutrients of maize leaves and barnyard grass, to assess their crude protein, lipid and energy conversion and to estimate the energy allocation in grass carp. The following diets were used: diet ‘A’ (reference diet) containing 39% crude protein with 19.8 MJ kg−1 gross energy; diets ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’, which contained the same amount of the reference diet as the control diet, supplemented with a known amount of dried barnyard grass, dried maize leaves or fresh maize leaves, respectively. Five fish were assigned to each treatment in each experimental unit. Reference and test diets were fed to fish and faecal samples were collected and the oxygen consumption was measured in order to set up an energy budget of the fish over the whole experimental period. The weekly development of the body weight was recorded. The body weight gain of the fish fed diet D was significantly higher than that of the group fed diet A, which also in turn was significantly higher than that of fish fed diet B or C. The apparent digestibility coefficients (ADC) of nutrients and gross energy for the different experimental diets in fish kept in the aquaria were, for diets A, B, C and D respectively, 94.1%, 60.9%, 70.5% and 84.7% for protein, 91.3%, 60.7%, 76.8% and 71.8% for lipid; 95.9%, 44.5%, 60.6% and 69.1% for gross energy. The partial ADC of plant leaf ingredients were determined and barnyard grass and dried maize leaves were found to be not only poorly digestible but having negative impact on the digestibility of the reference diet, while fresh maize leaves were well digested. The results of the present study indicated that fresh maize leaves have a good potential to be used as supplement in diets for grass carp.