Growth Response of African Catfish (Clarias gariepinus, Burchell 1822) to Dried Rumen Digesta as a Dietary Supplement

Abstract

The growth response of catfish (Clarias gariepinus) juveniles fed Dried Rumen Digesta (DRD) based diets was investigated for 9 weeks in hapa nets. One hundred and eighty (180) fish were randomly assigned to five diets formulated such that DRD replaced groundnut cake at 0, 10, 20, 30 and 40% represented as diets A, B, C, D and E respectively. Thirty six fish were assigned to each of the diets in hapa nets and fed at 5% body weight daily. Results showed that control diet ‘A’ gave the highest weight gain followed by ‘B’ and ‘C’ but poor results were obtained from diets ‘D’ and ‘E’. There were significant differences (p<0.05) in fish feed intake of control group and those fed DRD diets, the body weight gain followed similar trend as feed intake. There was no significant difference in feed conversion ratio (p>0.05) of fish fed diets ‘A’ and ‘B’ but were significantly different (p<0.05) from diets ‘C’, ‘D’ and ‘E’. This experiment revealed that DRD can be tolerated by Clarias gariepinus juveniles and support growth when dietary inclusion does not exceed 20%.