Fertilizers on Food Composition and Catfish Fry Performance

Demand for fish in both rural and urban areas is very high and continues to grow in most of the developing countries such as Tanzania. The African catfish (Clarias gariepinus) has gained popularity in the aquaculture sector of Tanzania in the recent times. Its demand has increased as food, control of over-population in tilapia ponds and as a bait for the Nile perch fishery. The rearing of Clarias gariepinus larvae to juveniles has proved to be challenging due to their small size and a lack of functional digestive system. Significant losses are incurred in the hatchery, as fry weans over from yolk absorption to exogenous feeding. This is due to inability to accept large sized feeds and assimilate protein from dry formulated diets. Due to this fact, it has been found important to provide the larvae with live foods such as zooplankton or algae before they are sequentially acclimatized to accepting formulated diets. Despite significant progress made in aquaculture, larvae rearing remains a bottleneck in C. gariepinus production. The use of natural live food at earlier stage of fry development seems to be one of the solutions to improve C. gariepinus growth performance and survival.