Growth Performance Of Juvenile Catfish (Clarias Gariepinus) Fed With Locally Formulated And Floating Commercial Feeds In Floating Net-Cages
It is estimated that by 2050, when the world population is over 9 billion resulting in shortage of food supply especially the protein rich food, Africa will have to increase food production by 300%, Latin America by 80% and Asia by 70% to provide minimally adequate diets for the projected population of 2 billion, 810 million, and 5.4 billion in the respective regions (Anon, 1997). Therefore the need to increase the protein intake is a major concern to scientific researchers that engage in food production and also to the government of such a nation. The experimental site is located at the 3-hectare reservoir of the Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria. Two hundred juveniles of Clarias gariepinus were stocked. Fifty fish per cage and four cages were used. The fish were fed daily at 5% of their body weight, into four hapas on a floating raft and each treatment was replicated twice. Two different diets were used for this experiment. One of the diets was a 45% crude protein floating commercial feed (Coppens) and replicated twice, while the other diet was a compounded sinking feed using locally available feed ingredients. The mean weight (g) per fish at stocking for treatment I and II were 25.90 and 24.72 respectively. Treatment I had the higher final mean weight per fish of 74.89 g while treatment II has the final mean weight per fish of 72.35 g. The specific growth limit of Clarias gariepinus fed with formulated and Coppens feeds were almost the same with the value 2.00 in treatment I and 1.89 in treatment II. Food conversion ratio was lower in treatment I and high in treatment II. There were little mortalities in the two treatments. The mean survival rate was highest in treatment 11. The mean feed intake was highest in treatment II (15.67g) and in treatment I (11.92g) compared to treatment I. Results indicated that Clarias gariepinus are good feed converters because the feed intake was directly proportional to the treatments. It could be concluded that the formulated diet performed better than the commercial feed (Coppens).