Effects of Supplementing Fish Meal with Garden Snail
The feeding cost of fish takes 60% or two third
of the total operational cost in fish farming (Lovell
1981, NRC 1983, Niamat and Jafri 1984, Akiyama
1988). This has been a major factor affecting the
development and expansion of Aquaculture
enterprise in Africa. The success of fish farming
depends invariably on provision of suitable and
economical fish feed. A survey of fish farms in
Nigeria in 1995 showed 86% of fish farms do not use
standard supplementary feed due to high cost of
production (Eyo 1995).Fish meal which forms the major component of
fish feed is scarce, highly competed for by other
animals and is the source of the high costs in
formulation. The quest to reduce the quantity of fish
meal while maintaining the protein quality in fish
feed has been the focus of fish nutritionists for
several years. Seve(2.1) Diet preparation:
Garden snails were collected from vegetation around
the experimental area. The shells were cracked and
the soft parts removed. The viscera mass were cut
off, leaving the foot and the mantle. They were
washed with alum in several changes of clean water
to remove slime. They were boiled for 15 minutes ral studies on replacing fish meal