Addition of pineapple waste in the diets of red hybrid tilapia (oreochromis mossambicus x oreochromis niloticus): Effect on growth performance and survivability

Tilapia is one of the essential aquaculture species that produced as food sources in Malaysia. The most common tilapia found in Malaysia is red hybrid tilapia, which is the hybrid of Oreochromis mossambicus and Oreochromis niloticus. Red hybrid tilapia was recognised because of its top growth rate and high diseases resistances. These species requires good quality of feed because feed influences the growth and survivability of tilapia. However, the high cost of production inputs is mainly on feed is a significant drawback for the farmer to culture tilapia. Therefore, this research was conducted to evaluate the effect of pineapple waste supplement in the diet of juvenile tilapia to improve their growth performance and survivability. This study was conducted in six weeks. Red hybrid tilapia were fed with four different percentage of pineapple waste namely as Control = 0 % of pineapple waste + commercial feed, T1 = commercial feed + 10 ％ of pineapple waste, T2 = commercial feed + 30 % pineapple waste and T3 = commercial feed + 50 ％ pineapple waste. The growth performance was evaluated based on growth rate and feed conversion ratio, and the survivability of the fish. Red hybrid tilapia were fed with 30 % of pineapple waste in T2 were resulted 29.00 g per fish of weight gain, 1.51 % per day of specific growth rate, 0.21 of feed conversion ratio and 91.11 % of survival rate after six weeks of feeding trial. Furthermore, the growth performance of red hybrid tilapia in T2 had the lowest feed conversion ratio with the higher weight gain. This research proves pineapple waste helps to increase the nutritional value in feed that can trigger the growth of red hybrid tilapia and provide tilapia farmer with an economical feed additive from pineapple by-product.