Dietary effects on growth performance and health indices for burbot (Lota lota maculosa)

• Main Author: Gulen, Sinem
• Other Authors: Cain, Kenneth
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Fisheries; Wildlife management; Burbot; Lota lota; lota
• Online Access: http://digital.lib.uidaho.edu/cdm/ref/collection/etd/id/1717

Burbot (Lota lota maculosa) are the only freshwater members of the Gadidae family and can be reared in similar water quality parameters as rainbow trout under controlled rearing conditions. Burbot have desirable fillets for consumers and demonstrate good growth performance in culture. As such, burbot are a favorable species for aquaculture and may have potential for polyculture in trout facilities to diversify production. To successfully develop burbot culture on a production scale, nutrient requirements in burbot feed should be evaluated. In this project, we aimed to determine growth performance of fish fed two dietary formulations (marine type or trout type) for economic burbot culture. Additionally, the digestibility of soy protein ingredients for burbot was investigated to address the potential to produce more sustainable diets for burbot production in the future. To evaluate growth performance with commercial diet blends, a feeding trial was conducted, incorporating a marine-type commercial diet (Europa), marine-type formulated diet (Burbot1), trout-type commercial diet (Oncor) and trout-type formulated diet (Burbot 2).The experiment was conducted as a complete randomized design, with three replicate tanks per diet. No significant differences in growth parameters such as FCR, SGR, RG and K factor (p>0.05) were observed for burbot fed the different dietary treatments. There were no statistically significant difference between treatments. Taking these results into account it is suggested that a trout type dies such as Oncor would provide equal growth to a higher cost marine type diet and be a preferred choice for most producers at this life stage. There were significant differences observed between treatments for some organosomatic indices. Fillet yield of fish fed Burbot 2 diet was significantly lower than fish fed other diets (p=0.0039), and fish fed Oncor diet had the highest fillet yield level. This indicates that fish fed Burbot 2 diet may not have utilized dietary protein as efficiently for muscle ...