A six-week study was conducted to assess the growth performance of hybrid African catfish, Heteroclarias fed on black soldier fly (BSF) larval-based diets. The experiment was conducted in RAS, circular plastic tanks (350 L) in a completely randomized design. Four isonitrogenous (400 kg-1 crude protein) and isolipidic (140 g kg-1 crude fat) diets were formulated where fishmeal (400 kg-1) was replaced at 0, 25, 50, and 75% with BSF larval meal. Fish oil was completely replaced with corn oil in the test diets. Fish (initial body weight of 200 ± 25g, 15 fish per tank, 4 treatments, 3 replicates,) were hand-fed at 3% body weight. The results showed fish fed with BSF 50 diet were more efficient at utilizing dietary nutrients for growth than other groups by having the highest final mean weight, weight gain and specific growth rate, which was similar to the fish fed the Control diet and BSF 25 diets but significantly higher (p < 0.05) than fish fed BSF 75. There is no significant difference (p < 0.05) in feed conversion ratio (FCR) among the dietary treatments. However, fish-fed BSF 50 had the lowest FCR while the highest was seen in fishfed BSF 75. This preliminary assessment shows that fishmeal could be partially replaced with BSF larval meal up to 50% and fish oil could be completely replaced with corn oil without negatively affecting the healthy growth of hybrid African catfish Heteroclarias.

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