The effect of dietary ascorbic acid supplementation on hatchability, survival rate and fry performance in Oreochromis mossambicus (Peters)

Abstract

The role of dietary ascorbic acid in the reproduction of tilapias, Oreochromis mossambicus (Peters), was investigated in three experiments. The first showed that ascorbic acid supplementation of broodstock feed (125 mg ascorbic acid per 100 g dry diet) improved hatchability and fry condition. In the second experiment, fry produced from broodstock fed a diet without supplemental ascorbic acid and themselves fed the same diet performed poorly in respect of growth, food utilization and survival rate. A third experiment was conducted in which broodstock were fed the diet supplemented with ascorbic acid and their progeny were fed the unsupplemented diet. These fry showed improved performance, in terms of growth, food utilization and survival rate compared to fry from the second experiment. This suggests that ascorbic acid supplementation of broodstock diets results in some transfer of the vitamin via the eggs to newly hatched fry resulting in some amelioration of ascorbic acid deficiency during the early stages of life.