EFFECTS OF DIETARY REPLACEMENT OF FISHMEAL BY CASSAVA LEAF MEAL ON GROWTH PERFORMANCE OF RED CARP ORANDA (Carassius auratus auratus) BY DEVELOPING AUTOMATIC FEEDER

Abstract

Fishmeal is an exceptional protein source in aqua-feeds due to its high palatability digestibility, and excellent composition of minerals, fatty acids and essential amino acids (Olsen and Hasan 2012). Moreover, in previous three decades' fish meal prices have also increased in real terms and are expected to be increased further with continuous growth in demand. This rapid increase in fish oil and fishmeal prices may have negative effect on the commercial aquaculture projects. Due to the finite supply and rising cost of fishmeal, aquaculture feed industry and research institutions have conducted a large number of studies to reduce dependency of aquaculture industry on fishmeal. Therefore, an experiment was conducted to evaluate cassava leaf meal instead of fishmeal in red cap oranda gold fish diet. Young cassava leaves were collected, chopped and sun-dried to prepare cassava leaf meal. The fish feed was prepared with 0%, 5% , 10% and 15% replacement level of cassava leaf meal for fishmeal. A total of hundred red cap oranda fish at the age of 28 days were the study population. Ten fish were used per replicate, and two replicates per treatment were allocated in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) Feed was fed in ad libitum and proper water quality was maintained. The T2 (10% cassava leaf meal) recorded highest body weight (0.44+-0.02g) and the least (0.28+-0.03g) was in T3 (15% cassava leaf meal). The weight gain was greater (p<0 05) for T2 (0.14+0.00%) and MT0 and T1 have the same value (0.07+-0.00 & 0.07+-0.01). There were no significant differences of total length and length gain of fish among the treatments. Highest SGR was obtained in T2 (0.33+-0.13%). Best CF (7.6+-0.65) was obtained in T1 diet, Results indicated that, growth performance and feed utilization values were significantly (p<0 05) higher in fish fed with diets containing 10% cassava leaf meal, whereas lower performance was in fish fed with diets containing 5% cassava leaf meal. The current study shows that cassava leaf meal can replace fishmeal up to 10% substitution level without any adverse effect on Growth and food utilization performance. On the other hand. automatic fish feeder will be developed. Growth performance will be compared of red cap oranda fish by using both automatic fish feeder and manual method. Highest length gain were obtain from the AT0 (automatic fish feeding system) (0.42+-0.03) and highest weight gain also from the AT0 (0.15+-0.02). Specific growth rate of the manual method and automatic fish feeder was 0.18+-0.01 and 0.37+-0.06 respectively. Fish can be fed by hand, by automatic feeders, and by demand feeders. Automatic and demand feeders save time, labor, and money, but at the expense of the vigilance that comes with hand-feeding (Steven et al., 2017).