Effect of Commercial Feed and Azolla Pinnata on Water Quality and Growth Performance of Nile Tilapia (Oreochrnmis Nilaticus)

This research was carried out to determine the effects of commercial feed and Azolla pinnala 0n water quality and growth performance of Nile tilapia (O. Niloticus) within 8 weeks (56 days) of experimental periods. Uniform size of O. niloticus fry were equally distributed in five experimental groups (T0, control; Tl, 20% Azolla; T2, 40% Azolla; T3, 60% Azolla and T4, 80% Azolla) in duplicate. The physico- chemical parameters: temperature, turbidity, pl-l, dissolved oxygen (DO), electrical conductivity, salinity, total dissolved solid (TDS), total ammonia nitrogen, nitrite nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen and total phosphorus were measured weekly while the weight of tilapias were Weighed biweekly. The most physico-chemical parameters in treatment T0 (0% of Azolla pinnata) has higher mean value compared to the treatment that content Azolla pinnata except pH, DO and total phosphorus. As compared to INWQS and PHILMINAQ standards, most of the physico-chemical parameters in this study showed they were within the permissible limit. The growth performance were higher in fish fed under treatment Tl (20% of Azolla content) followed by T2 (40% of Azolla content). The weight gain of tilapia was significantly decreasing when Azolla pinnata content exceeded 40% in the diet. The ANOVA analysis was F (4,195) = 131.864; P: 0.000. The significant value was (Sig< 0.05) show there were significant differences between all treatments. The experimental results show that Tl was the best diet that given an optimum values of weight gain and also physico-chemical water quality parameters although the total phosphorus value was quite high but still in range of preference value.