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¹ National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA), Inland Aquatic Resources and Aquaculture Division, Panapitiya, Waskaduwa, Sri Lanka
² Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Aquaculture and Aquatic Resources Management Department, Khlong Luang, Pathumthani Thailand
³ Kasetsart University, Department of Aquaculture, Bangkok, Thailand DOI : 10.4194/AQUAST1187 Viewed : 1014 - Downloaded : 1676 Insect meal is a candidate and promising ingredient to replace the unsustainable fishmeal (FM) in aquafeeds. However, previous studies showed that total replacement of FM with some insect meals was not successful for some stages of Nile tilapia. Therefore, this experiment aimed to evaluate the growth performance of Nile tilapia fingerlings, replacing the FM with house cricket meal (HCM) and field cricket meal (FCM). The FM of the control diet (100FM) was 100% replaced in the house cricket-included diet (100HCM) and field cricket-included diet (100FCM). All the fish were fed on the respective research diets for six weeks. The weight gain (WG), daily weight gain (DWG), and relative weight gain (RWG) of 100FM were significantly (P<0.05) higher than in 100HCM and 100FCM. However, the specific growth rate (SGR) of 100FM was not significantly different from 100FCM, while the SGR of 100HCM was significantly lower than both 100FM and 100FCM. The feed conversion ratio (FCR) of 100FM and 100FCM were statistically similar (P<0.05), and significantly lower than that of 100HCM. Survival was not significantly different among all the treatments. Results suggest that FCM has the potential as an alternative to FM in Nile tilapia fingerling feed. Keywords : Insect meal Cricket meal Fishmeal Oreochromis niloticus