International Journal of Marine Science 2016, Vol.6, No.34, 1-7
1
Research Report Open Access
Short-term Evaluation of Graded Levels of Dietary Garlic Powder (
Allium
sativum
L.) as Growth Promoter on Growth, Survival and Feed Utilization of
Redbelly Tilapia,
Tilapia zillii
Reared in Glass Aquaria Tanks
Olufemi O. Ajiboye
1,
, Rashida Qari
2
1 Aquaculture Department, Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research, PMB 4015, Sapele, Delta State, Nigeria
2 Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Karachi, Karachi-75270, Pakistan
Corresponding author email
International Journal of Marine Science
2016, Vol.6, No.34 doi
Received: 14 Jul., 2016
Accepted: 28 Sep., 2016
Published: 30 Sep., 2016
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
:
Ajiboye O.O. and Qari R., 2016, Short-term Evaluation of Graded Levels of Dietary Garlic Powder (
Allium sativum
L.) as Growth Promoter on Growth,
Survival and Feed Utilization of Redbelly Tilapia,
Tilapia zillii
Reared in Glass Aquaria Tanks, International Journal of Marine Science, 6(34): 1-7 (doi:
Abstract
Research findings on garlic-supplemented diets as growth promoters, immune-stimulants and antistress in tilapia species
are well documented. In spite of this, an ideal dosage, duration regime, and mode of administration for garlic (
Allium sativum
) to
obtain significant growth rates in tilapia production are yet to be well tested. Thus, the present study demonstrated a laboratory
experiment to optimize the optimum graded level for the growth, nutrient utilization and survival of red belly
Tilapia zillii
reared in
twelve glass aquaria tanks for 28 days. One hundred and eighty
T. zillii
fry with average body weight of 0.03 g were randomly
stocked in each aquarium with average water holding capacity of 0.01m
3
and at a stocking density of 15 fish / glass aquarium.
Experimental fish were fed diets supplemented with garlic powder (GP) at 0 (control), 1%, 2%, and 3% / kg diet at a ratio of 3% of
their body weight for a period of 28 days. The results of this study revealed that fish group fed on GP at 3% graded level had
significant (P < 0.05) higher final weight (7.59g), mean weight gain (7.56), average daily gain (0.27mg/fish/day), survival rate
(93.30%) and better feed conversion ratio (0.69) when compared to other treatments. There was no significant difference (P > 0.05)
in the water quality parameters recorded among all the treatments. The study recommends that
T. zillii
should be fed on a
garlic-containing diet at3% / kg diet to achieve significant growth rates and to reduce the stunted growth which is the bottleneck in
tilapia industries. Further research to analyze the functional mechanism behind the physiological activity of garlic-supplemented diets
in different finfish species is proffered.
Keywords
Tilapia zillii
; Garlic powder; Immune-stimulants; Antistress; Growth promoter; Feed
Introduction
Synthetic androgens are used in fish culture as sex controlling agents and as growth promoters if energy is shut
away from developing ovaries towards growth of somatic tissues (Rizkalla et al., 2004). However, the recent
consumer demand for farmed fish has increasingly stressed quality and safety, and the absence of pollutants,
antibiotics and carcinogens. Thus, along with growth performance, the fish rearing strategy needs to focus on food
hygiene. Since the European Union ratified a ban in 2006 for the use of all sub-therapeutic antibiotics (Regulation
1831/2003/EC), scientists have intensified efforts to identify and develop safe dietary supplements and additives
that enhance the life activity, health and immune system of farmed fish (Ji et al. 2007; Shim et al. 2009). Plants
are natural sources of safer and cheaper chemicals. Plant products have been reported to promote various activities
like antistress, growth promotion, appetite stimulation and immunostimulation in aquaculture practices (Citarasu
et al., 2001, 2002; Sivaram et al., 2004).
Garlic (
Allium sativum
) has been proven effective as a hypolipidemic (Sumiyoshi 1997), antimicrobial (Kumar
and Berwal, 1998), antihypertensive (Suetsuna, 1998), hepatoprotective, and insecticidal (Wang et al., 1998) agent
in various human and animal therapies. Garlic was studied in different forms of extracts: aqueous, ethanol and
dried powder (Shin and Kim, 2004). In aquaculture operations, garlic promotes growth, enhances immunity,
stimulates appetite, and strengthens the control of bacterial and fungal pathogens. These effects of garlic are due
