Does commercial probiotics improve the growth performance and hematological parameters of Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus?

Özet

Oreochromis niloticus becoming a promising aquaculture species globally, but recent disease outbreaks and poor growth with commercial feed making it challenging. A 60 days long aquariumtrial and series of laboratory assays have been conducted to assess the growth performance of O.niloticus fed with a locally available commercial probiotic. O. niloticus fry’s were fed with a mixture of basal diet and probiotics supplementation at a level of 0% (control), 0.2%, 0.4% and 0.8%.After the trial phase weight gain, length gain, specific growth rate (SGR), percentage of weightgain (PWG), percentage of length gain (PLG) were noted. Among all, highest values of aboveparameters were observed at T1 (0.2%) treatment group. Weight gain, length gain, PLG and PWGwere significantly improved in T1 treatment group (p<0.05). Additionally, hematological parameters including hemoglobin (Hb), white blood cell (WBC) and red blood cell (RBC) were also observed for all groups and T1 was found to have highest values for all these parameters, althoughthere were no statistically significant differences between the values of T1 and T2. The results ofthis study showed that 0.2% dietary probiotics supplements in basal diet would optimize thegrowth performance and hematological parameters of aquarium reared O. niloticus.