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International Journal of Aquaculture, 2014, Vol.4, No.22, 1
-
6
http://ija.biopublisher.ca
1
Research Report Open Access
The Effect of Ammonia on Growth and Survival Rate of
Tilapia rendalli
in
Quail Manured Tanks
Masautso E. Sakala
1
, Confred G. Musuka
2
Natural Resources Development College, Lusaka, Zambia; 2The Copperbelt University, School of Natural Resources, P.O. Box 21692, Kitwe, Zambia.
Corresponding author Email
International Journal of Aquaculture, 2014, Vol.4, No.22 doi: 10.5376/ija.2014.04.0022
Received: 29 Mar, 2014
Accepted: 18 May, 2014
Published: 04 Jun., 2014
Copyright © 2014
Sakala and Musuka, This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article
:
Sakala and Musuka, 2014, The Effect of Ammonia on Growth and Survival Rate of
Tilapia rendalli
in Quail Manured Tanks, International Journal of
Aquaculture, Vol.4, No.22: 1-6 (doi: 10.5376/ija.2014.04.0022)
Abstract
This experiment was conducted to determine the effect of ammonia on growth and survival rate of
Tilapia rendalli
reared
in concrete tanks for 14 weeks using quail manure. It was a completely randomized design (CRD) with five treatments; T1 (control,
without quail manure), T2 (0.32kg quail manure/tank/week), T3 (0.40kg quail manure/ tank/week), T4 (0.48kg quail
manure/tank/week) and T5 (0.64kg quail manure/tank/ week), replicated two times. Twenty-five fish, with an average individual
initial weight of 14 g were stocked per tank, each measuring, 2m ×2m (4m
2
). Every fortnight individual fish were weighed on a
sensitive scale and the length measured on a measuring board to the nearest 0.1 cm. The results of the experiment indicated that fish
raised under treatment 4 (T4) grew much faster (ANOVA, P<0.05) than the other groups with weight gain of 246%. T2 had the
lowest mean weight gain of 86.08%. The final mean weights ranged from 26.23 g to 47.55 g, while total length ranged from 111mm±
2.29mm to 140.1mm ±2.29mm respectively. The study further revealed that in order to achieve table size growth and survival of fish,
0.48 kg quail manure/week/4m
2
should be used as optimum for better growth of fish, although no primary productivity was measured
to estimate zooplankton biomass. At the same time, daily growth rate was good and within acceptable range for fish of the same size.
Survival rate in all treatments was very high, with the lowest being above 60%. The study further demonstrated that higher amounts
of ammonia affected growth and survival of the fish in treatment 5 (T5), a tank with the highest amount of quail manure added per
week.
Keywords
Ammonia; Effect; Growth; Survival rate; Quail manure; Concrete tanks
Introduction
There has been tremendous development in the
farming of tilapia worldwide, in which the commodity
is not only the second most important farmed fish
globally, next to carps but is also described as the
most important aquaculture species of the 21
st
century
(Shelton, 2002). The main purpose of fish culture is to
raise the fish to table size in the shortest possible time
(Lovell, 1989). Tilapia, especially
Oreochromis
niloticus
(Nile tilapia) is reported to be an appropriate
species in aquaculture owing to its wide adaptability,
and its ability to convert many organic, animal and
agriculture wastes into high quality protein (Balarin,
1979). However, the cost of feed still remains high
and feed costs make up the largest cost of fish
production, hence a challenge to most fish farmers
(Steffens, 1989). In all regions of the world, the
increase in the cost of raw ingredients for
manufactured or on-farm aquafeeds resulted in an
increase in aquafeed prices from 20 to 40 percent, thus
forcing farmers to adopt alternative strategies to
secure feeds (Rana Sunil Siriwardena, and Hasan,
2009). In the light of such price increases, farmers are
increasingly looking for alternative sources of feeds
such as trash fish, animal by-products and grain
by-products, or are reverting to the use of single
ingredient supplementary feeding regimes, reduced
feeding frequency and ration. These types of
interventions to mitigate against rising feed costs will
compromise fish growth, health and welfare and could
reduce fish productivity and production (Rana Sunil
Siriwardena, and Hasan, 2009). The fish feed plays an
important role in the value chain as it implies
important control of the quality of raw materials,
which is crucial for the food safety as well as efficient
high quality feed types that ensures optimal growth
for different fish species farmed under a variety of
different conditions (Thorarinsdottir
et al
., 2011). The
feed cost has to be controlled as this is most often
approximately 50% of the total production cost in