Induced spawning, survival and growth of an African catfish hybrid (female <i>Clarias gariepinus<i> and male <i>Clarias anguillaris</i>) fingerlings relative to their parental species in the mount Cameroon region

Abstract

Clarias is a good candidate for aquaculture in Cameroon because of its high economic value but getting hardy and fast growing Clarias seed have been a major problem to fish farmers, especially in the Mount Cameroon Region. The objectives of this work are: to present the results of the experiments where a new Clarias hybrid fry/fingerlings will be reared simultaneously with the fry/fingerlings produced from pure parental species crosses in order to provide a critical assessment of the growth performance and survival rate of the hybrid fingerlings relative to those of the both parental species. Interspecies hybrids were produced by artificial insemination of the African catfish, pure C. gariepinus females X pure C. anguillaris males. The results revealed that the growth performance of the hybrid fingerlings relative to both parental species was most rapid in the second month and a high survival rate of 85.5 % was recorded. The absolute density estimated (at 95 % confidence limits) showed that the hybrid fingerlings of two mature female pure C. gariepinus (1kg/fish) and one mature male C. anguillaris (1 kg/fish) was 10,471 ± 126 fingerlings. This result is the first recorded success in the survival and growth of African catfish hybrid fingerlings relative to their parental species in the Mount Cameroon Region.

Key words: Performance, aquaculture, hardy, interspecies hybrids, environmental