Culturing Nile Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus): Using Fish Scales and Fish Gills as an Alternative Fish Feeds

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Because of the archipelagic nature of the Philippines, Filipino citizens have been depending on the fishing industry as one of the primary sources of their income. In this study, culturing of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus)using fish scales and fish gills as alternative feeds were conducted.

METHODS

The fish scales and gills underwent sun drying, pulverizing, and baking process. Four tanks were prepared for each treatment (T1-Fish Scales, T2-Fish Gills, T3-Fish Scales and Gills, and T4-Commercial Brand). Each tank had fifteen tilapia fed with two grams of feeds twice a day for two months. Five tilapia were randomly selected from each tank for weight and length measurement every two weeks. The data were treated statistically using Composite Mean to find the effect of each treatment to the growth of tilapia. One-way ANOVA was employed to find the significant difference between the weight and length of tilapia before and after the treatments. T-test was applied to find a significant difference in the growth of Niletilapia before and after the treatment. Pearson Product Moment Correlation of Coefficient was used to test the relationship between the weight and length of cultured tilapia.

RESULTS

The result showed that the commercial brand feed has the highest composite mean weight (5.74 g) while the fish gills feed (7.01 cm) has the highest composite mean length. The result of ANOVA proves that the weight, F-value of 1.74 and 1.79, and length, F-value of 0.50 and 0.22, of Nile tilapia before and after the treatments are comparable. Supported by the t-test, no significant difference in the growth of Nile tilapia before and after the treatment was noted. Pearson-r reveals that weight and length have a positive correlation using different treatments, fish scales, fish gills, and commercial brand feeds have 0.60, 0.21, and 0.81 rxy value except for the fish scales and gills (0.06) which have a negligible relationship where its weight is not affected by its length.

DISCUSSIONS

This study proves that alternative feeds could be used as a substitute for commercial brand feeds.