EVALUATING FERMENTED WATER HYACINTH (Eichornia crassipes) IN DIET OF TILAPIA-NILA (Oreochromis niloticus)  

Mas Tri Djoko Sunarno*, Reza Samsudin, Aditiya Nugraha
Institute of Research and Development for Freshwater Aquaculture
Jl. Sempur No. 1 Bogor, 16154 Indonesia
mastrimm@yahoo.co.id

Water hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes) growing fast in inland waters and become a weed having to be eradicated annually and consuming a lot of money. From fisheries sector, abundance of the weed will decline fish productivity. Leaf part of this weed contains nutrients similar to rice bran and potentially to be used in diet formulation. Fermentation hypnotically improved its quality. It is therefore, this study proposed to evaluate fermented water hyacinth leaf in tilapia fingerling diet. The test weed was taken from a lake in Bogor District and cut to be taken of its leaf. The leaf was dried and grinded to have a meal form as a subject to fermentation using commercial tempe yeast.

After fermented, the leaf meal was used in diet formulation in four levels, namely 0, 10, 20 and 30%. Tested diet contained similar protein and energy of 25% and 300 kcal per 100 g diet, respectively. Tilapia fingerlings of 2-3 g in weight were distributed in 12 aquaria at stocking density of 20 per aquarium and fed tested diet at ad libitum 3 times a day for 40 days of experimental period. The diets were evaluated its digestibility using indicator of Cr2O3. The results showed that after fermented, leaf meal of water hyacinth improved its proximate content from 7.8% up to 18.10%. Inclusion of fermented leaf meal up to 30% was not significantly affected in absolute growth of tilapia, higher than at 30% (P<0.05). In other hand, diet consumption at 0% was significant lower that other treatment (P<0.05). Values of FCR, and protein retention at 0 and 50% were significantly better than other treatment (P<0.05) (Table 2). Test diet at 0 and 10% was belter digested than at other treatments (Table 3). It is therefore could be said that inclusion of fermented leaf water hyacinth at up to 20% in diet formulation of tilapia was recommended.