ABSTRACT

The success of culturing fish depends on minimizing cost in the production process. This is because it is known that inappropriate feeding practices in aquaculture lead to over feeding which results in feed waste and consequently higher production cost and contamination of aquatic environment. A comparison of the effect of two fish feeds on the growth rate of manually sexed male Oreochromis niloticus fingerlings was studied. The experiment was conducted in outdoor concrete tank which lasted for the period of 24 weeks. There were two treatments, each with six replicates. The stocking densities were the same in each treatment and replicate. The fish were fed at 5% body weight. Two different feeds (multi-feed and coppens) of (45.00% CP and 42.94% CP) respectively were utilized during the culture period. The t-test however showed that both the mean weight and length of the fingerlings were significantly different at (p<0.05).There were significant differences (P<0.05) observed in the mean length. The highest mean weight and mean length at the end of the study period was recorded for the fish fed with multi-feed of 45.00% CP (103.7g ± 3.59 S.E) and (14.30cm ± 0.32 S.E) respectively followed by those fed with coppens feed of 42.94% CP (86.4g ±27 S.E) and (14.12cm ± 0.30 S.E) respectively. The regression analysis tries to assess the length weight relationship of the fish fed with multi-feed and coppens feed. The highest survival rate of I 00% was recorded for coppens feed followed by multi-feed with the value of 96% survival.