EFFECT OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF LIPIDS ON THE GROWTH PERFORMANCE AND SERUM INDICES OF AFRICAN CATFISH (Clarias gariepinus).

ABSTRACTS

A ten weeks feeding trial was carried out in order to examine the effect of including different types of lipids in the diets fed to African catfish fingerlings (Clarias gariepinus) on their growth performance and serum biochemistry. A total of one hundred (100) African catfish fingerlings with weight range of 129-130g per one 50litres circular plastic bowl containing ten (10) fingerlings were randomly allotted to five (5) experimental diets (CP: 40%) on 3% inclusion levels of different types of lipids of which each treatment (Treatment 1: vegetable oil; treatment 2: palm kernel oil; treatment 3: palm oil; treatment 4: groundnut oil and treatment 5: fish oil) replicated twice. Other water quality parameters were maintained throughout the duration of the study.

Growth parameters such as Mean weight, Mean weight gain (MWG), percentage mean weight gain (%MWG), mean weight gain/day (MWG/day), specific growth rate (SGR), initial mean weight (IMW), final mean weight (FMW); and nutrient utilization such as feed conversion ratio (FCR), total feed intake (TFI), average feed intake (AFI), protein efficiency ratio (PER) and protein intake (PI) were determined. The results for the growth performance showed that there were significant differences among the parameters (p