Utilization of Moringa oleifera leaves and Lannea barteri bark extract as growth promoting additives in the diet of Clarias gariepinus fingerlings

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to determine the effects of plant additives as fish growth promoter in clariid fish species. Five hundred and forty (540) Clarias gariepinus fingerlings (4.6 ± 0.02 were distributed into 27 re-circulatory tanks of 50 litres capacity filled with 20 litres of freshwater. The fishes were distributed in replicate of 9 dietary treatments. The diets comprised of Non-Additive (NAD), Moringa Whole (MWL), Moringa Aqueous Extract (MAE), Moringa Ethanol Extract (MEE), Lannea Whole (LWL), Lannea Aqueous Extract (LAE), Lannea Ethanol Extract (LEE), Antibiotic (ANTB) and a commercial reference feed –Copens (CRD) as control diet. The experiment revealed that, the survival rate ranges between 90 and 98% in which the highest survival rates were recorded in the group of fish that were fed plant additives. The growth parameter showed significance difference (P<0.05). however, there were no significant difference (p>0.05) in the growth parameters of fishes fed CRD, NAD and ANTB. Among the plant additives based diets, best growth was recorded in LWL based diet (9.077 ± 0.58). There was no significant difference (P>0.05) among CRD, NAD and ANTB in the SGR values (2.46 ± 0.21/day, 2.48 ± 0.17/day and 2.23 ± 0.23/day) respectively. Moreover, there were no significant differences (P>0.05) for Feed Conversion Ratio while, the Protein Efficiency Ratio values in CRD, NAD, and ANTB were significantly higher (P<0.05) than MWL, MAE, MEE, LWL, LAE, LEE respectively. A significantly high Apparent Net Protein Utilization (ANPU) was recorded in LEE (98.33 ± 2.89) based diet while ANTB (5.57 ± 1.92) had lowest ANPU. From the research, Lannea whole incorporation in the diet of Clarias gariepinus had positive effect on its growth.