Effect of dietary supplementation of biofloc meal on growth and survival of GIFT tilapia

Abstract

A 60 days indoor growth trial was conducted to study the effect of dietary supplementation of biofloc meal on growth and survival of juvenile GIFT tilapia. Four isonitrogenous and isoenergetic experimental diets (32% crude protein) were prepared using biofloc meal at different inclusion levels viz., 0 (T0), 20 (T1), 30 (T2) and 40% (T3). A commercial diet (T4) was used for comparison. The feeding trial was conducted in 15 nos. of 40 l plastic troughs in triplicate, utilising GIFT tilapias weighing an average of 2 g. During the experimental period, water quality parameters were measured and recorded daily. The mean value of water temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, salinity, ammonia-N, nitrite-N, nitrate-N, hardness and alkalinity recorded in the experimental systems were 28.5°C, 8.1, 5.5 ppm, 4.5 ppt, 0.03 ppm, 0.07 ppm, 11 ppm, 630 ppm and 162.5 ppm respectively. Among the biofloc meal enriched diets, diet T1 with 20% biofloc yielded the best results in terms of average body weight gain, feed conversion ratio (FCR), specific growth rate (SGR), protein efficiency ratio (PER) and feed efficiency ratio (FER). The mean body weight gain recorded in T1 was 25.28±0.81 g. The results demonstrated that biofloc meal is a potential ingredient that can be incorporated in GIFT tilapia diet at 20% level for better growth performance.

Proximate Chemical Composition of Dried Shrimp and Tilapia Waste Bioflocs Produced by Two Drying Methods

“…The crude lipid content of the bioflocs found in this study was low, ranging from 0.35-0.92 g/100 g. Nevertheless, the lipid values were in line with previous studies reported by Emerenciano et al [12,14], Anand et al [37], Himaja [41], and Durigon et al [43]. In general, the lipid content in biofloc is usually low, with concentrations ranging from below 0.1 to 2.5 g/100 g [20,22,30,36,58,59].…”

“…Although biofloc meet the nutritional standards for aquaculture feeding, it has to be noted that the protein from biofloc should only be considered as a supplement for dietary proteins [8]. Based on earlier studies, dietary supplementation with biofloc ranging from 4% to 50% can improve growth performance and enhance the immune system of cultured organisms [18,21,36,37,39,42,55]. Therefore, the protein contents of 20 and 24 g/100 g recorded in the present study from the tilapia waste bioflocs, in addition to their superior protein content to shrimp waste bioflocs, suggest that this source be used for dietary protein supplementation in the formulation of fish diets.…”

“…However, when a similar drying temperature (40 °C) was used by Khatoon et al [42] to dry waste bioflocs harvested from a shrimp waste pond, a value of 4.2 ± 0.1 was recorded for the lipid content of the bioflocs. However, the higher lipid content might be due to the different types of biofloc, the aquaculture conditions, and the abundance of the organic matter in that pond [8,10,13,[15][16][17][18][33][34][35][36].…”

“…Factors such as the density and particle size of the biofloc, the carbon source that is supplied, the environmental conditions, water quality parameters, and food preferences of the animals have been found to affect the characteristics and nutritional composition of biofloc ([8,10,13,15-18,33-36]. The biofloc source and the method of drying could also influence the nutritional composition, since various proximate compositions (the protein, lipid, ash, fiber, carbohydrate, and energy contents) have been observed in many previous studies using several methods (sunlight, air-drying, oven-drying, and freeze-drying) and different drying temperatures and times [18,22,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]. Nonetheless, the effects of different waste sources and drying methods on the nutrient composition of dried biofloc have yet to be explored.…”

Sunflower meal as an alternative protein source to replace soybean meal in the diet of GIFT strain of Nile tilapia Oreochromis niloticus

“…Composition of mineral premix (Quantity per kg): Magnesium -2,800 mg, Iodine -7.4 mg, Iron -7,400 mg, Copper -1,200 mg, Manganese -11,600 mg, Zinc -9,800 mg, Cobalt chloride -4 mg, Potassium -100 mg, Selenium -4 mg, Calcium carbonate -27.25%, Phosphorous -7.45 mg, Sulphur -0.7 mg, Sodium -6 mg, Calpan -200 mg, Aluminium -1,500 mg and Choline chloride -10,000 mg trough were measured for estimation of growth parameters and feed utilisation. Growth performance was examined in terms of live weight gain (LWG), feed conversion ratio (FCR), specific growth rate (SGR%), protein efficiency ratio (PER), feed efficiency ratio (FER), apparent net protein utilisation (ANPU), energy retention (ER), survival rate and mean weight gain which were calculated according to Prabu et al (2018).…”