Oreochromis mossambicus accumulates lead without showing growth inhibition

Oreochromis mossambicus (Tilapia fish) has been found in many high heavy metal content-waters. Tilapia fish is also known to be one of the consumable fish in Indonesia. As many water bodies have been contaminated by Pb due to industrial and household pollution, we investigated the Pb accumulation in the flesh of tilapia fish and its effect in the fish growth at different sub lethal concentrations. Our experiments by exposing tilapia fish for 30 days at different sub lethal concentrations showed that tilapia fish accumulated relatively high concentration at day 30 at 10% LC₅₀ but neither at the earlier incubation times nor at other lower concentrations. We also show that tilapia fish did not exhibited any significant growth inhibition at different sub lethal concentrations of PbCl₂.