COMPARISON OF DIGESTIBILITY AND FAECES RECOVERY IN TILAPIA (OREOCHROMIS NILOTICUS) USING TWO METHODS OF FAECES COLLECTION

摘要

The accurate measurement of digestibility in fish is difficult. This leads to a large variation in apparent digestibility coefficients (ADC) between different studies. A large source of this variation is related to the method of faeces collection (Vandenberg & Noue, 2001). Further, the replacement of fishmeal based diets by vegetable based diets may change the characteristics of the faeces produced and thereby the efficiency of faeces collection from the water. Therefore, this study is to investigate the effect of dietary quality (control versus duckweed) on ADC and faeces recovery estimates obtained by two types of faecal collection methods (Choubert collectors versus settling tank).