A comparative study on growth performance of all male tilapia produced from crossing oreochromis niloticus and oreochromis urolepis hornorum and hormonal sex reversed oreochromis niloticus cultured in concrete tanks

A study aimed at determining growth performances and yields from all male tilapia obtained from an alternate sex crossing (O. niloticus x O. urolepis hornorum) and with 17α-methyltestosterone (MT) (O. niloticus) administration was conducted at Magadu Farm, Aquaculture Research Facilities, Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania. Nine rectangular concrete tanks of 7 m2 each were used in this study. A total of 126 fingerlings stocked at 2 fish/m2 were reared in three treatments which were replicated three times, making a total of nine replicates. The treatments were: mixed sex, sex reversed tilapia, and hybrid tilapia. There was no significant differences in sex proportion between the two methods of producing all males fingerlings ( = 1.860, d.f = 1, P = 0.173). Growth performance was significantly different among the three treatments (ANOVA, P <0.05). Turkey test showed higher growth performance in T3 than T2 and T1 (P<0.05). Similarly, there were significant differences in yield among the treatments (ANOVA, P< 0.05) with the highest gross yield from hybrids (542.30 ± 50.46 kg ha-1year-1) followed by sex reversed tilapias (495.40 ± 53.66 kg ha-1 year-1). The current study revealed that, hybridization is an ideal method for tilapia monosex production compared to sex reversal. It is recommended that further research using on-farm conditions is required before transferring this technology to farmers.