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Abstract

Background and Objective Sustainability of the consistent expansion of aquacultural industry depends on development of fish culture techniques in order to obtain the most efficient, safe and cost effective methods for producing aqua products. The study evaluated the growth performance and feed utilization of African catfish Heterobranchus bidorsalis fed varying levels of flamboyant Delonix regia seed meal as replacement for wheat offal for 14 weeks. Materials and Methods The experiment was conducted for 14 weeks 98 days from May 6th to August 12th, 2017. Four experimental feeds Diets 1, 2, 3 and 4 each with about 40 crude protein content were formulated at diet 1 0, diet 2 15, diet 3 20 and diet 4 25 inclusion levels of fermented and boiled Delonix regia seed meal FSM. Post 2 weeks of acclimation, 15 fish were stocked in a happa pen sized 0.432 m2 for each feed with 3 replicates. The initial mean weight of fish was 33.700.78 g. Fish were fed at 3 body weight daily and adjusted accordingly every fortnight. Water quality parameters were noted morning and evening weekly. Results Survival rate ranged from 79.99-86.66 randomly without significant difference. Treatments which contained 15 FSM gave the highest nominal performance with respect to mean weight gain, percentage mean weight gain, mean growth rate, specific growth rate and performance index, though there was no clear superiority over other feeds p0.05. The feed utilization indices were generally fair across all treatments, with best nominal performance in the treatment containing 25 FSM. Conclusion The results revealed that the fish were able to utilize all the feed types well for growth, particularly at 15 inclusion level of flamboyant seed meal as basal feed stuff.