Summary: | Use of prebiotics, nondigestible dietary ingredients that beneficially affect the hostby selectively stimulating the growth of and/or activating the metabolism of healthpromotingbacteria in the intestinal tract, is a novel concept in aquaculture. An8-week feeding experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of dietaryprebiotic inulin on the growth performance, intestinal bacterial density, bodycomposition and values of blood serum enzymes in the juvenile great sturgeon(Huso huso). Three replicate groups of fish (initially averaging weight 16.14±0.38g) were fed diets containing prebiotic inulin at levels ranging from 1% to 3%. Thebasal diet was contained 3% cellulose. The results of linear regression showed therewas a negative relationship between some performance indices including weightgain (WG), specific growth rate (SGR), protein efficiency ratio (PER), net proteinutilization (NPU), energy retention (ERE), feed efficincy (FE), protein retention(PR) and supplementation level of inulin. At the end of trial, the 1% inulintreatment insignificantly showed an enhaced survival between the treatment groups.Intestinal lactic acid bacteria (LAB) increased in group treated with 1% inulincompare to other groups. No significant difference were observed in bodycomposition and level of serum enzymes (P>0.05). Moreover there was significantcorrelation between ALT and LDH values (P<0.01). Result obtained in this studyshows that the prebiotic inulin didn’t influence the increase of the growthperformance of juvenile great sturgeon and it is not appropriate for supplementationin the diet of beluga. PhD Advisors: A. Matinfar, Abdulmajid Haji Moradlu Counsellors: Abdulmohammed Abedian Kenari
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