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Formulation, production and evaluation of floating catfish feed
Abstract
This trial was carried out to compare the performance of catfish fed with four experimental diets; a reference foreign diet (Multifeed) and three isonitrogenous and isoenergetic locally formulated diets with different palm oil contents (1, 2 and 3 liters) coded as Feed 1, Feed 2, Feed 3 and Feed 4 respectively. The growth trial which lasted for six months was conducted in rectangular concrete tanks of 2.5m x 0.7m x 0.58m with water volume maintained at 0.17 m level. A total of 1800 catfish, Clarias gariepinus, juveniles with an average weight of 40.18} 0.51g were randomly allotted (at the rate of 150 juveniles per tank) into each of the 12 experimental concrete tanks. The result indicated significant variation in all the treatments in terms of final body weight, weight gain, daily weight gain and specific growth rate of the fish at harvest (p>0.05). The data generated also showed that the reference diet and the three formulated feeds had no significant influence on catfish in terms of food conversion ratio, protein efficiency ratio, protein intake, feed intake/fish and survival ratio. Feed 3 (containing 2 litres of oil) was observed to be the best treatment among the locally formulated diets as it resulted in significantly (P . 0.05) high final bodyweight (229.4g), weight gain (213.3g), daily weight gain (1.78g/fish/day) and specific growth rate (2.19g) of catfish that was statistically comparable to those of fish fed with the foreign control feed. The result of the present study suggest that a locally formulated floating feed containing 33.25% crude protein, 2.58 k/cal and 1 liter palm oil is comparable to foreign expensive feed in terms of cat fish yield and production.
Keywords: Aquaculture, catfish, protein source and fish feed
