Fisheries is an important food production sub-sector, providing almost 20% of the world’s protein supply; however, the trend in fish production from capture fisheries has reached its limits due to overfishing. A study was conducted to evaluate the performance of two locally formulated feeds as possible replacements for an imported costly commercial feed (CMF) commonly used in rearing of African catfish (
Clarias gariepinus
Burchell) in Tanzania. Two feed types, namely TAF 1 and TAF 2, denoting TAFIRI feed type 1 and 2 were formulated from fish meal (
Rastrineobola argentea
) and soybean (
Glycine max
L.), respectively. Nine concrete tanks of 12 m
3 each were stocked with 320 catfish fry each, and fed with formulated feeds at 5% of their mean body weight for four months. Water in the tanks was wholly flushed out on a weekly basis and fish sorted for the fast growers to reduce cannibalism. On a monthly basis, fish were randomly sampled for body length and weight. The mean values for temperature, dissolved oxygen and pH ranged from 21.62±0.04 to 25.16±0.05 °C, 5.43±0.05 to 5.7±0.07 mg O
2 L
-1, and 6.5±0.05 to 6.61±0.03, respectively. Feed TAF 1 was the best performer with weight gain of 33.72±0.89, average daily gain of 0.28±0.01, FCR of 1.35±0.05 and specific growth rate of 4.61±0.04. Fish fed on the commercial feed performed the poorest, with weight gain of 6.17±4.8, average daily gain of 0.05±0.004, FCR of 1.56±0.11 and specific growth rate of 2.98±0.05. Results from this study suggest that locally formulated feeds can cost effectively be used for the rearing of African catfish in Tanzania.