Nutritive Potentials and Utilization of Sardine Head Meal in the Diet of African Cat Fish

Sardine is one of the families of fish commonly found in Nigeria waters. It is highly acceptable, and cheaper. In spite of these values, sardine head are majorly regarded as waste by consumers, therefore this study was conducted to investigate the possibility of using sardine head meal as a protein source in African catfish diet.180 African catfish fingerlings (+ -22.77) were separated into four groups, 15fingerlings were stocked per tank and replicated three times. The fingerlings were fed with five iso-nitrogenous diets (40 % crude protein) formulated with four different inclusions of sardine head meal 0 % (control diets), 5 % (diets 2), 10 % (diet 3), 15 % (diet 4) for the period of 8weeks. At the end of the feeding period, the mean weight gain (MWG), percentage weight gain (PMWG), specific growth rate (SGR) increased significantly (pless than 0.05) as the inclusion level of sardine head meal increased up to 10 %. Feed acceptability was very high in all the treatments. However, treatment 2 (5 % SHM) had the least mean feed intake (77.10g). The FCR were also significantly different (pless than0.05) and the least FCR (1.37) was obtained for treatment 2. In the same vein, highest protein efficiency ratio (1.83) was recorded for treatments 2 and 3, indicating that fish fed 5 % was able to utilize the protein efficiently compared to other treatments. It could therefore be concluded that inclusion of 5 % sardine head meal in the diet of African cat fish would improve growth and improve protein utilization in African cat fish.