Nutritive worth of differently prepared Housefly Maggot Substituted Diets for Nile Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus)

Abstract

In recent time, efforts of fish nutritionists have been directed toward searching for relatively low-cost fish feed ingredients that is of good quality and easily procurable as an alternative to the expensive feed ingredients in fish feeds. In this study housefly maggot was used as the protein source in the diets for Oreochromis niloticus juveniles. Five diets were compounded to substitute fish meal at 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% for each of the oven dried, sundried and fresh maggot diets and tested on the fish for 12 weeks. The data were analyzed using One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test for comparison among treatments. Analyses of various growth parameters revealed that diets substituted at 25% up to 75% maggot for both oven-dried and sundried maggot diets and 50% up to 100% fresh maggot diets were not significantly different in weight gained by fish fed with fish meal diets (p > 0.05). Water quality parameters showed that none of the differently prepared maggot substituted feeds polluted the water media. The studies showed that maggot substituted feeds irrespective of the method of preparation are suitable for the growth of O. niloticus for optimum growth and nutrient utilization.