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Livestock-Based Farming Systems, Renewable Resources and the Environment |
The main of the experiment was studied taro leaf utilization as protein replacement for soybean meal on the growth performance of catfish (Pangasius hypophthalmus) in 5 m2 each concrete pond (2.5m*2m) with 1 m depth. A total of 225 catfish fingerlings were fattening for one month before started experiment with fish stocking density was 3 fish/m2. The average initial weight was 8.89, 8.62, 10.9, 7.98, 8.84g for cooked, dried, ensiled, fresh taro leaves and soybean meal treatment respectively. All feed were mix with rice bran and balance with crude protein (20% in DM basis) and offered at 5% in DM basis of the fish body weight. The experiment design was Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with 5 treatments and three replications within each treatment. The treatments were soybean meal (SB), fresh taro leaf (FTL), dried taro leaf (DTL), ensiled taro leaf (ETL) and cooked taro leaf (CTL). The experimental feeds were carried out over a period of 100 days. Through the experiment showed that daily weight gain was highest on SB and CTL diet and lowest on DTL, ETL and FTL (P<0.001), while length gain and ratio of weight and length were highest on SB diet (P<0.001) than taro leaves processing but fish survival was not different among treatments (P>0.05). The fish yield was highest values for SB (2472kg/ha) and CTL (1514kg/ha) diet but lowest was DTL (1058kg/ha), ETL (1064kg/ha) and FTL (1150kg/ha) (P<0.001). Water parameter showed did not different among treatments (P>0.05) but water transparency was lowed on ETL (14.7cm) treatment but other treatments were not different. It is concluded that taro leaves can be used successful for growing catfish by supplement them with agriculture by-product.
Key words: Taro leaves, catfish, weight gain, length gain, survival, yield