NUTRITIONAL PERFORMANCE OF JUVENILE RED DRUM (<i>Sciaenops ocellatus</i>) FED VARIOUS FISH, SHRIMP, AND SQUID DIETS

Klett, David Alexander

NUTRITIONAL PERFORMANCE OF JUVENILE RED DRUM (<i>Sciaenops ocellatus</i>) FED VARIOUS FISH, SHRIMP, AND SQUID DIETS

Authors

Klett, David Alexander

Abstract

Aquaculture is the rearing of aquatic animals for human consumption or use which is a growing sector of the world’s protein production. Due to the rising costs of fishmeal used to make pelleted fish feed, the industry is moving to replace fishmeal as the primary protein source of the feed, without altering the growth rate of aquaculture fish. A 12-week feeding trial utilizing juvenile red drum was conducted to determine performance of variations of combinations of the “gold standard” diet components of fish, shrimp, and squid, plus a commercial fishmeal-based pelleted feed, fed isocalorically to identify if there is a more productive combination for red drum growth and health. This can provide information to develop fishmeal replacement diets (FMRDs) that can more closely mimic the performance of natural diets in fish growth. Traditional aquaculture measurements showed that the fish fed the diet comprised only of fish had the highest specific growth rate, condition factor, and protein conversion efficiency, with the lowest feed conversion ratio, indicating the fish component was the best for red drum growth on a fixed ration. The commercial pelleted feed performed better than the other natural diet combinations in terms of growth on a fixed ration, which indicated that it was well balanced nutritionally. A future analysis of the metabolome of these fish using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)-based metabolomics may reveal metabolic pathways that are enhanced or limited from the natural diet components, which can be used to better formulate FMRDs.