Evaluation of Potential Alternative Ingredients for Formulation of Fish Feed

Freshwater aquaculture has high production rate, but the inconsistency supply of feeds can lead to low quality of fish. This initiates a high demand of fish feeds with complete diet to assist in growth and performance of the reared fish. The conventional fish meal has high protein content but it is expensive and can lead to high manufacturing cost of fish feeds. Therefore, present study is conducted to demonstrate nutritional value in several potential ingredients for formulation of new and economically favorable fish feed formulation for catfish. Proximate analysis of earthworm powder, fish meal, leucaena leucocephala leaves, soybean waste and rice bran was performed to analyze their moisture, ash, protein and crude fiber content. While amino acid analysis was carried out to obtain amino acid profiles. Based on the results, the selected ingredients demonstrated remarkable nutritional content which are required in the catfish diet, thus indicate their high potential as substitute ingredients in fish feed formulation.