Fish Food Aquaculture

GROWTH PERFORMANCE, FEED UTILIZATION, BODY AND FATTY ACID COMPOSITION OF NILE TILAPIA (OREOCHROMIS NILOTICUS) FED ELEVATED LEVELS OF COCONUT OIL
2.1 INTRODUCTION
Aquaculture has been deemed one of the prominent and fastest growing sectors in the food industry globally. The increase in demand by consumers for aquatic products solely does not depend on satisfying their hunger but with varying reasons such as balanced diet and health reasons (FAO, 2012). This has resulted in higher demand for improved forms of fishmeal and oil; the major components of fish feed used in aquaculture (Dernekbaşi & Karayücel, 2010). Although there are various sources of oils, marine fish oil has been the most commonly used dietary lipid in fish diet which has now

It has the ability to withstand environmental stress, reproduce easily and grow at a faster rate with high market value as well (El-Sayeed, 2006). Their ability to feed on varieties of food ranging from zooplankton to fish food (Olaosebikan & Raji, 1998), lead to efficient utilization of vegetable oil (Sala & Balesteros, 1997). O. niloticus has been cultured successfully on series of alternative lipids and blends with FO at various levels, including soybean oil, crude palm oil, crude palm kernel, sunflower oil, palm fatty acid distillates, linseed and many others (Gabber, 1996; Ng et al., 2001; Kaushik, 2004; Ng, 2004; Ng et al., 2004). The choice of lipid for feed formulation have also been influenced by other factors such as diseases and resistance (health) of the fish and for consumer health (Ballestrazzi et al., 2006; Ng et al., 2009). However, numerous novels on lipid have become widely available both in mammals and some fish species on disease and resistance (Azad et al., 2001; Al-harbi & Uddin, 2004; Cai et al., 2004) on effects of vegetable oils on plasma metabolites and hematocrits; few have been evaluated in the context of coconut oil replacement of FO in O. niloticus diet (Nordrum et al., 2003; Mohamed et al., 2002; Nagao & Yanagita, 2010; Williams et al., 2006; Allan et al., 2001) and has shown the association between growth performance, body composition and coconut oil levels. If shown, this would strengthen our understanding on optimal level of coconut oil replacement of FO, and provide insight into the links between coconut oil levels, growth performance and body composition, plasma metabolites.
In this study, we therefore evaluated the effect of replacement of fish oil by varying levels of virgin coconut oil to determine whether virgin coconut oil feed supplementation will yield similar or improved growth performance, feed utilization, body