EFFECT OF USING TOMATO MEALS (SOLANUM LYCOPERSICUN. L.) AND/OR SPIRULINA ALGAE (SPIRULINA PLATENSIS) AS ALTERNATIVE PROTEIN SOURCE IN GRASS CARP (CTENOPHARYNGODON IDELLA) DIETS

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Animal production Research Institute, Agriculture Research center, Giza, Egypt

2 Soils, Water and Environ. Research Institute, Agriculture Research center, Giza, Egypt

Abstract

The experiment was conducted to partially replace fish meal (FM) by Spirulina platensis (Sp) and tomato meal (TM) protein for garss carp diets. The control diet, 100% protein FM was used as T1 and three experimental diets were formulated to replace FM with Tomato meal (25%) T2, Sp at levels of (25%) T3  and Mixture TM (25%) + Sp (25%) T4 (50%). Diets were wice fed daily for nine weeks to triplicate groups 10 fish (initial mean weight 1.77 ± 0.11 g) kept in aquaria. All diets were formulated to be iso-nitrogenous (30.33 ± 0.29% CP) and iso-caloric (4467.5± 0.41 Kcal/kg diet). Fish were fed the tested diets at a rate of 6% of their wet body weight / day, in two equal portions, 6 days a week then gradually reduced to 4 % of the total fish biomass daily.  Provided feed was adjusted bi- two weekly according to the changes in body weight. The fish fed T4 diet TM (25%) & Sp (25%) and T3 diet (Sp(25%) recorded the highest value of feed and nutrient utilization while the fish fed tomato meal 25% (T2) was the lowest value compared with the fish fed control diet (T1). However, there were not significantly of nutrient utilization with experimental diets compared with the control diet (T1). Results indicated that up to 50% of FM can be replaced by algae meal and tomato meal without significantly affected performance, feed utilization and whole body composition of fish in practical diets of Grass carp. Also, mixture meals (as its protein is generally less expensive than fish meal protein) can reduce feed cost and feed cost/kg gain. Under the experimental conditions it seems that the diet contained mixture meal was the most promising diet.

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