Growth Performance and Survival Rate of Juvenile Catfish (Clarias gariepinus) Fed Processed Catfish Offal Diet”

Abstract

This experiment aimed to evaluate the effect of dietary supplementation of L-carnitine and amino acids (methionine+lysine) for Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), the basal diet (300 g protein and 19 MJ Gross energy kg dry matter) was formulated and served as control (D1). The based diet was supplemented with 300 1 mg L-carnitine (D2), 5g methionine+10g lysine (D3), 7g methionine+15g lysine (D4), 5g methionine+10g lysine+300 mg L-carnitine (D5), or 7g methionine+15g lysine+300 mg L-carnitine (D6). A total number of 300 apparent healthy Nile tilapia fry (1.63±0.07g) were randomly distributed into 18 rectangular aquaria (160 liter for each) and each aquarium holding 25 fry was then randomly assigned to one of three replicates of six diets. Fish group fed D6 retained the highest significant body weight (BW), body length (BL), weight gain (WG), specific growth rate (SGR) and significantly (P<0.05) improved feed intake, feed conversion ratio (FCR) while protein efficiency ratio was not significantly affected. Also, fish group fed D6 gained the highest significant (P<0.05) protein and lowest insignificant (P>0.05) dry matter, fat and ash while fish fed the control diet (D1) released the lowest significant protein and the highest insignificant fat content. All treatments significantly altered protein content while dry matter, fat and ash content of fish flesh was not significantly affected. It is concluded that, dietary supplementation of O. niloticus with 7g methionine+15 g lysine+300 mg L-carnitine kg significantly 1 improved growth and feed utilization, increases tissue protein and decrease tissue fat of Nile tilapia flesh.