Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture, University of Agriculture, PMB 2373, Makurdi, Nigeria.
Increasing cost of conventional feedstuffs has made it imperative to investigate into the utilization of the unconventional ones. The utilization of thermally processed toad meal as a replacement for fish meal was investigated. The toads were collected, processed and oven-dried at 1000C to a constant weight. The thermally processed toad meal was thereafter used to replace fish meal at replacement levels of 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% in diets 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 respectively. Mean weight gain (MWG) differed significantly (p<0.05), with highest value recorded in diet 1 (20.83g ± 0.39) and lowest value in diet 3 (11.81g ± 0.78). Specific growth rate (SGR) differed significantly (p<0.05), ranging from 1.49%day-1 ± 0.07 in diet 3 to 2.14%day-1 ± 0.02 in diet 1. Thermally processed toad meal diets gave less growth performance indices than fishmeal, but could be a fair enough replacement for fish meal at 100% replacement level. Replacement of fishmeal with thermally processed toad meal indicated that their synergic effect was less than their individual effects.
Key words: toad meal, fishmeal, thermal processing, Clarias gariepinus