Apparent digestibility coefficients of selected feed ingredients for juvenile hybrid tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus×Oreochromis aureus

Abstract

The apparent digestibility coefficients (ADCs) of dry matter, crude protein, crude lipid, gross energy, phosphorus and amino acids in local fish meal (LFM), Peruvian fish meal (PFM), poultry by-product meal (PMM), meat and bone meal (MBM), tilapia by-product meal (TM), fermented soybean meal (FSBM), soybean meal (SBM), peanut meal, canola meal (CM), cottonseed meal (CSM) and de-gossypoled cottonseed meal were determined for juvenile hybrid tilapia (7.18 ± 0.2 g, mean ± SD). A reference diet (RF) and test diets (consisting of 70% RF and 30% of the feedstuff) were used with 0.5% chromic oxide as an external digestibility marker. The juvenile hybrid tilapias were stocked in 500-L fibreglass tanks at a density of 20 fish per tank. Faeces were collected from triplicate groups of fish using a faecal collection column attached to the fish-rearing tank. The results indicated that the ADCs of dry matter for juvenile hybrid tilapia ranged 71.88–89.53% for animal products and 65.89–79.98% for plant products. For crude protein, apparent digestibility coefficients of protein (ADCp) exceeding 90% were observed for FSBM, SBM and PFM, and ADCp of MBM was the lowest among all the treatments. Apparent digestibility coefficients of lipid in all the treatments were above 90%; the results indicate that lipids from both animal and plant sources were well digested by hybrid tilapia. The ADCs of phosphorus of animal and plant feedstuffs ranged between 58.04–74.44% and 52.65–64.23% respectively. The lowest ADC of phosphorus was observed in CSM among plant ingredients and in MBM among animal ingredients. The ADCs of energy were similar to those of dry matter and protein; the highest and lowest ADCs of energy were found in PFM and CM respectively. In general, the amino acid availability coefficients tended to reflect the ADCp among highly digestible ingredients. For the animal products, the availabilities of amino acids in PFM, LFM and PMM were generally higher than that in TM and MBM; among all the plant products, the availabilities of amino acids in FSBM and SBM were higher than in CM. These results indicated that juvenile hybrid tilapia is able to utilize different feedstuffs efficiently.