Effects of fermented soy pulp on the growth performance of red hybrid tilapia (Oreochromis sp.)

Research was aimed to evaluate the effect of fermented soy pulp on the growth performance of red hybrid tilapia (Oreochromis sp.). Red hybrid tilapia was given an expensive commercial pellet that contained fish meal which increased the cost production of the fish. This study was used fermented soy pulp to substitute partially fish meal in the tilapia diet because of it is low cost and had high protein content. There were five treatments diets namely T1 (30% fish meal + 50% fermented soy pulp), T2 (20% fish meal + 60% fermented soy pulp), T3 (10% fish meal + 70% fermented soy pulp), T4 (5% fish meal + 75% fermented soy pulp), T5 (80% fermented soy pulp) and commercial pellet as control with three replicates. Rice bran (10%), flour (10%) and Fish oil (10%) were constant ingredients of formulated diet in each treatment. The feeding trial was conducted for 56 days. At the end of the feeding trials, five fishes per treatment were selected and sacrificed by euthanized using cervical dislocation. The liver was then subjected to histological study. The result of the proximate analysis showed that T1 and T3 had the highest protein content. Control group showed the best performance regarding specific growth rate (SGR) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) as well as had significance difference (p<0.05) compared to other dietary treatments. Furthermore, T2 also performed well regarding SGR and survival rate. All the dietary treatments showed histology changes which T1, T2 and T3 showed less than 25% histology changes on the fish liver while T4 and T5 showed less than 50% of histology changes on the fish liver. However, control diet did not show any histology changes on the fish liver. This result indicates that fermented soy pulp can be a supplement on red hybrid tilapia (Oreochromis sp.) diet.