P.J. Mahida, S. I. Yusufzai, S. R. Lende, H. Mapwesera, G. Chavda and G. Rana
Abstract
Partial replacement of dietary fish meal by soybean meal in tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus) diets was examined. The six isonitrogenous experimental diets were prepared which included a control diet (100% fish meal) and five treatment diets viz. fish meal replaced with soybean meal at 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% of dietary protein levels respectively. The diets were formulated to provide 40% crude protein on a dry weight basis. Fish (initial weight 0.62 ± 0.049 g) were fed experimental diets ad libitum for 60 days. 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 560.95 ± 19.36 to 711.88 ± 47.16 %, 2.61 ±0.09 to 3.30 ± 0.18, 1.37 ± 0.02 to 1.51 ± 0.04 and 0.76 ± 0.04 to 0.98 ± 0.13 respectively. The survival was obtained in the range of 83.33 to 100 %. Based on the results recorded from the present study, it was found that higher growth, SGR, PER, survival and lowest FCR were obtained by feeding the fish with the diet T5 containing 40% soybean meal. Thus, it was revealed that the soybean meal can replace 40% of fish meal in the diet of O. mossambicus advance fry.