February 15-18, 2009 Washington State Convention Center Seattle ...

REPLACEMENT OF FISH MEAL WITH SOYBEAN MEAL IN DIETS FOR SNAKEHEAD
Channa striata
Tran Thi Thanh Hien, Chong M. Lee and David A. Bengtson
College of Aquaculture and Fisheries,
Can Tho University
Can Tho, Vietnam
ttthien@ctu.edu.vn
Culture of snakehead, Channa striata, is a rapidly growing industry in the Mekong River in Vietnam and Cambodia, but relies
largely on trash fish for feed. In order to make the industry more sustainable, we seek to develop snakehead diets based on fish
meal and plant proteins. In this experiment, we tested a control diet of fish meal against diets in which soybean meal replaced
fish meal at several levels (20, 30, 40 or 50% replacement), with appropriate essential amino acid (EAA) additions so that all
diets matched the EAA profiles of fish meal. In addition, we also included treatments in which those soybean replacement
diets were supplemented with either a) phytase, or b) taurine. All treatments were done in triplicate. The experiment began with
snakehead juveniles that averaged 4.7 g in size and lasted for 8 weeks. Growth of the fish on diets with 20% or 30% replacement
of fish meal with soybean meal was statistically indistinguishable from those fed the control fish meal (0% replacement)
diet, but diets with 40% or 50% fish meal replacement yielded statistically poorer growth. Addition of phytase or taurine to the
replacement diets enabled growth on the 40%, but not the 50%, replacement diet to be statistically indistinguishable from the
control. Thus, soybean meal can replace up to 30% of fish meal in the diet without addition of phytase or taurine, or 40% of
fish meal with the addition of phytase or taurine.
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