Effects of Feeding by-Products; Maggot Meal, Fish Meal, Soybean Meal, Blood Meal and Beef Brain on Growth, Survival and Carcass Composition of African Catfish, Heterobranchus Longifilis Valenciennes,

A forty nine-days feeding trial was conducted in aquaria at density of 1 larvalL-1 to evaluate the growth performances, survival, nutrient utilization and carcass composition of the African catfish Heterobranchus longifilis larvae fed trice daily ad libitum to triplicate groups with local by-products fish meal (FME), blood sausage of pig (BSA), soybean (SBE), beef brain (BBR), maggot flour (MFL) and Artemia salina (ASA) as reference diet (Experience 1). Diet had a significant effect on growth performance and carcass composition (p < 0.05). Final body weight, Final body length, Body weight gain, Specific growth rate and Coefficient of variation were highest in fish fed ASA and FME. Survival rate (SR) was highest in fish fed MFL. Coefficient of variation and cannibalism rate were highest in fish fed FME. Feed conversion ratio (3.38 ± 0.39; 5.30 ± 1.610) values were significantly (p < 0.05) lowest in fish fed MFL and ASA respectively. Inversely, Protein efficiency ratio (1.47 ± 0.20) was highest in fish fed BBR. For carcass composition, the highest carcass protein was obtained in fish fed ASA. Carcass crude lipid was highest in fish fed SBE. In the Experiment 2 three diets of Experiment 1 were selected by their growth and survival performances to prepare fortified diets. Thus soybean ( SBE+), beef brain (BBR+) and maggot flour (MFL+) diets were fortified with 4 % of each mineral (iron, chlorine and phosphorus), 2 % premix vitamin/ amino-acid, and 1 % of each amino acid (lysine and methionine) and compared to Artemia salina as reference diet. Final body weight, Body weight gain and Specific growth rate were highest in fish fed MFL+. Inversely, Feed conversion rate (0.89 ± 0.30) was lowest in fish fed MFL+. Protein efficiency ratio (0.95 ± 0.04) was lowest in fish fed SBE+. Carcass composition showed significant difference (p < 0.05) among diets fortified. Carcass crude protein and ash contents were lowest in fish fed SBE+. In contrast, carcass crude lipid content was highest in this group.