A Comparison between Chicken Viscera and Housefly Maggot Cultured from this By-products for Nile Tilapia Diets: Growth Performance, Feed Utilization and Whole Body Composition

Aims: The feeding trials were conducted to compare the effects of partial fishmeal replacement by two different animal protein sources on growth performance, feed utilization efficiency and body composition of juvenile Nile tilapia.

Place and Duration of Study: The study was carried out at the Aquaculture Research Center, Department of Zoology, Faculty of Sciences and Technics, University of Abomey-Calavi for a period of 84 days.

Methodology: Three isonitrogenous and isoenergetic diets were formulated containing fishmeal (CD), chicken viscera meal (CVM) and housefly maggot meal (HMM), as partial fishmeal replacement. Commercial diet Skretting (SK) was used as reference diet. All male Oreochromis niloticus with an average initial body weight of 8.65 g were fed thrice a day to apparent satiation. Each treatment was randomly attributed to three replicates.

Results: Fish fed all experimental diets showed no effects (P>.05) on survival rate (91.33-96.00 %), condition factor (1.85-1.9), protein efficient ratio (2.05-2.37) and feed conversion ratio (1.21-1.40), although higher values were observed with control diets. Final mean weight and daily weight gain of fish fed HMM diet (88.31 g ; 0.95 g. days-1) were not significantly different from those fed control diets C (88.54 g; 0.95 g/j) and Sk (87.59 g; 0.94 g/j) respectively. Growth performances significantly decreased (P<.05) in CVM group (75.09 g; 0.75 ± g/j). Whole-body protein contents were similar in all groups, whereas lipid content was highest in those fed CVM.

Conclusion: The results indicated that 200 g fishmeal per kilo diet can be successfully replaced with 250 g.Kg-1 of HMM without adverse effect on growth and feed utilization whereas CVM inclusion did not perform also well.