Comparative efficiency of agricultural waste-based diets on the growth and survival of <i>Oreochromis niloticus</i> fingerling in net hapas

Abstract

Two experimental diets having blood meal (BM) and soybean meal (SBM) respectively, as main sources of protein were compared with Pfizer commercial fish pellets in the nutrition of O. niloticus fingerlings (2.22 ± 0.76 S.D.). The fish were fed the diets at 5% biomass (half at 800 and 1600 hours, respectively) for eight weeks to assess, their performance on and efficiency of utilization of tile diets. Results from the study indicate that there were no significant differences in the growth (daily and specific growth rates), feed conversion, condition and survival of the fish receiving the various diets (P? 0.05). However, there were significant differences in the relative growth rate of fish fed the BM-, SBM-based diets and commercial fish pellets (P < 0.05). There are strong indications from this study that O. niloticus may perform comparatively well on these diets and hence they can serve as alternative cheap sources of proteins in the diets of the-fish.