SUBSTITUTING FISH MEAL WITH SMOKED FISH WASTE MEAL IN DIETS FOR AFRICAN CATFISH

(CLARIAS GARIEPINUS)

Amal S. Hassan1, Medhat E.
Seden2,

Talaat N. Amer2 and Nader E. El-Tawil2

1 Department of Fish Culture, 2Department of Fish Nutrition.

Central Laboratory for Aquaculture Research, CLAR, Agriculture Research Center.

E-mail: [email protected]

Received 9/ 7/ 2013

Accepted 18/ 8/ 2013

Abstract

This study was conducted to evaluate the use of smoked fish waste meal (SFWM) in practical diets for African catfish, Clarias gariepinus (8.35 g initial body weight). Six diets were formulated in which SFWM replaced 0.0 (control), 20, 40, 60, 80, or 100% of the protein supplied by herring fish meal (HFM). All diets are isonitrogenous (30.0% crude protein) and isolipidic (9.0% crude lipid). Each diet was used to feed triplicate groups of fish two times a day
at a rate of 4 % of fish live body weight at first 8 weeks and 3% for the rest four weeks. Results demonstrated that SFWM had good potential as a complete substitute of the protein supplied by HFM for African catfish. No significant changes were observed in growth performance, feed conversion, and protein utilization compared to fish fed the control diet (100% HFM based diet). Survival rate did not differ significantly among treatments. The partial or complete replacement of SFWM protein for HFM protein in the diets did not affect fish proximate composition (dry mater, crude protein, fat or ash) compared to the control group.
Moreover, the economic evaluation showed that a diet containing 100% SFWM reduced the feed cost by 27.39%. In conclusion, this study clearly indicates that SFWM can serve as a complete replacement for fish meal in African catfish, Clarias gariepinus diets without any adverse effect on growth performance, feed efficiency and survival rate.

Keywords: Smoked fish waste meal, African catfish, growth performance, feed efficiency, body composition, economic evaluation.