Formulated Diets, Feeding Strategies, and Cannibalism Control during Intensive Culture of Juvenile Carnivorous Fishes

Abstract

Intensive culture of carnivorous fishes on live food entails high production costs. Formulated diets can minimize the cost involved in intensive culture and allow the production of advanced juvenile carnivorous fishes. Juvenile carnivorous fishes can often be weaned successfully from live food to moist and dry diets. Weaning is mainly affected by diet palatability, feeding strategy, initial fish size, and cannibalism. The use of synthetic and natural feed enhancers, improvement of texture and other physical properties of diets, and a period of training can increase diet acceptance by young carnivorous fishes. Cannibalism can cause massive losses during intensive rearing of carnivorous fishes and is affected by food availability and stocking density and intensifies with differential growth among fish. Feed training, adequate supply and uniform distribution of feeds, adequacy of stocking rates, and fish grading can greatly reduce losses due to cannibalism in intensive culture. Further investigations on intensive culture of carnivorous fish should address: (1) diet palatability: improvement in the texture of dry diets and identification of potential feed enhancers for the species cultured and (2) the effects of feeding and weaning strategies, stocking density, initial fish size, and grading methods on training success and incidence of cannibalism.

Keywords:

• feed weaning
• diet additives
• differential growth
• cannibalism.