Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

EFFECT OF REPLACEMENT OF DIETARY FISH MEAL BY DEGOSSYPOLATED COTTONSEED MEAL ON GROWTH PERFORMANCE AND FEED UTILIZATION OF TILAPIA (OREOCHROMIS MOSSAMBICUS) ADVANCE FRY

S. R. Lende, S. I. Yusufzai, P. J. Mahida, H. Mapwesera, G. Chavda and G. Rana

Abstract

A sixty days feeding trial was conducted to evaluate the use of a cottonseed meal as an alternative protein source to replace the expensive fish meal in diets for Tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus). The six isonitrogenous experimental diets consisted of a control diet (100% fish meal) and five treatment diets where fish meal replaced with cottonseed meal (10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% of dietary protein) w ere prepared. The diets were formulated to provide 40% crude protein on a dry weight basis. Total 360 numbers of tilapia (O. mossambicus) advanced fry were randomly distributed into six treatments (control + treatment), each in three replicate. The fishes were reared in 10 ppt saline bore well water. They were fed ad libitum during the experimental duration. At the end of the feeding trial, weight gain, feed conversion ratio (FCR), specific growth rate (SGR) and protein efficiency ratio (PER) were found to be in the range of 456.32 s± 51.59 to 788.83 ± 44.61%, 2.36 ± 0.12 to 3.30 ± 0.08, 1.24 ± 0.06 to 1.58 ± 0.04 and 0.76 ±0.02 to 1.06 ± 0.06 respectively. The survival was obtained in the range of 73.33 to 100 %. Based on the results, it was found that higher growth, SGR, PER, survival and lowest FCR were obtained by feeding the fish with the diet (T4) containing 30% cottonseed meal. Thus, it was revealed that the cottonseed meal replacing 30% of fish meal in the diet of O. mossambicus advance fry gave better growth.