Effect Of Replacing Fish Meal With Blood Meal OnChemical Composition Of Supplement For NileTilapia (Oreochromis Niloticus)

Abstract

The objective of the work was to evaluate the effect on the nutrientcontent of replacingfish meal (FM) with blood meal (BM) infishsupplement. Three isonitrogenous diets (35% crude protein) wereformulated using FM as the main source of animal protein (BM0);50% replacement of FM with blood meal (BM50); or 100%replacement of FM with BM (BM100). The chemical composition(ash, crude protein, crude fat and crudefibre) and amino acidcomposition were determined. Replacement of FM with BM didnot affect the proximate composition of the diet apart from ashcontent which decreased with the level of substitution.Substitutingfish meal with blood meal reduced the levels ofmethionine, lysine, isoleucine, leucine, proline, valine andincreased the levels of arginine, phenylanine and alanine in thediet. Amino acid indices revealed that BM0 had more amino acidswith the highest chemical scores followed by BM50 and BM100. Inall the diets, methionine was the most limiting amino acid. Theessential amino acid index of the diets reduced with the level ofreplacement of FM (0.94, 0.88 and 0.77). The study showedsubstitution of up to 50% FM with BM gave a useful protein dietand 100% gave almost a poor protein diet.