Abstract

Introduction: Tilapias (Family Cichlidae) are among the freshwater fish species suitable for aquaculture and widely cultivated globally because of their fast growth rate, efficient use of natural aquatic foods, propensity to consume a variety of supplementary feeds, omnivorous feeding habits, resistance to disease and handling, ease of reproduction in captivity, and tolerance to wide ranges of environmental conditions Aims: Experiment was conducted to evaluate the growth performance of Oreochromis niloticus fed varying levels of Basella alba leave based diets. Materials and Methods: O. niloticus fingerlings (1.95±0.01g) were randomly selected and distributed into 15 glass tanks at the rate of 15 fish per tank representing five treatments and three replicates. Five diets were formulated to containing (0, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and 2.5 g/100kg diets) of B. alba were prepared and fed to the fish for 70 days. Results: The results revealed that weight gain, specific growth rate, feed intake and feed conversion ratio improved progressively up to the inclusion level of 2.0 g/100g of B. alba leave meal and then declined indicating 2.0g/100g B. alba leave meal as the optimum level that can promote the growth performance of the fish. However, 4th degree polynomial regression analysis indicated the optimum level as about 2.1 g/100g diet. It was observed that there was no significant difference in the survival (p > 0.05) of the fish fed diets with different B. alba leave meal. Conclusion: Based on the results obtained from this present study, it could be concluded that 2.0-2.1 g/100kg of B. alba leave can be included in the diets of O. niloticus fingerlings for optimum growth performance.

Keywords: Nile tilapia, Basella alba, and Growth performance