Effect of substitution of maize bran with chicken manure in semi-intensive pond culture of Tilapia rendalli (Boulenger)

An experiment was carried out to determine the effect of substituting maize bran with chicken manure on the production of Tilapia rendalli semi-intensive pond culture. The experiment was carried out at Bunda College of Agriculture's fish farm, University of Malawi, where twelve 20 m2 concrete ponds of 1 m depth were used for 3 months from October 2005 to January 2006. A thin layer of soil was spread at the bottom of all ponds to allow growth of natural food. Each pond was stocked with 3 fish m−2 of 10.71 g average weight. Chicken manure was used as the organic manure applied at 1.6 kg 20 m−2 and substituted for maize bran by 25%. All treatments were replicated three times. It was observed that fish growth was higher in the 3/4 maize bran+1/4 chicken manure with a final weight of 25.1 g, followed by 1/4 maize bran+3/4 chicken manure with a final weight of 21.6 g. The lowest final weight was 19.3 g in the chicken manure only, but did not differ significantly (P<0.05) from the maize bran treatment, which had a final weight of 19.7 g. This suggests that the use of chicken manure would produce better results and may increase yield when combined with supplementary feed like maize bran evidenced by high survival rates of 80% and above in all treatments.