Growth in the FORMI family

The concept of using FORMI, potassium diformate, in pig nutrition as a tool to achieve significantly higher weight gains and improved feed efficiency is widely described and documented. This proven concept has now been developed by ADDCON to benefit a wider range of species.

AQUAFORM was tested as a growth promoter in tilapia grow-out in Indonesia (See Table 2). In this study, fish were fed over a period of 85 days 6 times a day diets containing different concentrations of AQUAFORM (0%, 0.2%, 0.3% and 0.5%). The diets contained 32% crude protein, 25% carbohydrates, 6% lipids and 10% fibre. The fish were challenged orally starting at day 10 of the culture period with Vibrio anguillarum at 105 CFU per day, over a period of 20 days (Ramli et al., 2005).

Over the entire feeding period, from day 1 to 85, AQUAFORM significantly increased feed intake (P<0.01) and weight gain (P<0.01) and significantly improved the feed conversion ratio (P<0.01). Furthermore, protein efficiency ratio was also significantly improved due to AQUAFORM addition (P<0.05). The improvement was best with 0.2% and 0.5% addition of AQUAFORM. Survival rates of fish after the challenge with V. anguillarum on day 10 were also significantly higher compared to the negative control and the effect was dose dependent (P<0.01).

Table 2: Effects of AQUAFORM supplementation in diets on performance of tilapia challenged with V. anguillarum (modified from Ramli et al., 2005)

^abcwithin rows, means without common superscripts are significantly different (p<0.05)

It was concluded that the dietary inclusion of AQUAFORM at 0.2% is an efficient tool to control bacterial infections in tropical tilapia culture.