Effects of Replacement of Vegetable oil with Detoxified Jatropha curcas oil in the Diet of Clarias gariepinus (Burchell, 1822) fingerlings

Abstract

High cost of fish oil and other lipid sources for fish feed production had prompted the research investigation into the use of detoxified Jatropha curcas oil (DJCO) as an alternative dietary lipid source in the diet of Clarias gariepinus fingerlings (3.87±0.03g). A Complete randomized block design was adopted for the experiment where 240 Clarias gariepinus fingerlings and treatments were randomly allotted in 12 tanks in triplicate. Four diets were formulated to contain 45% crude protein at 0% lipid inclusion (diet 1-control), 12% detoxified Jatropha curcas oil (diet 2), 12% raw Jatropha curcas oil (diet 3) and 12% vegetable oil (diet 4) respectively. At the end of the experiment the results obtained indicated significant differences (P<0.05) for fishes fed diet 2 in terms of growth parameters evaluated, body compositions and survival. Fishes fed with detoxified Jatropha curcas oil-based diet had the best mean weight (3.38g) specific growth rate (2.06%/day), feed conversion ratio (1.59), protein efficiency ratio (93.19), survival (88.33%) and body nutrient compositions while those fed raw Jatroval curcas oil gave poor growth, low body nutrients composition and survival rate. This study established that detoxified Jatroval curcas oil can be adopted as alternative dietary lipid in the diet of Clarias gariepinus fingerlings.