Dietary protein source has major impact in growth performance of gilthead seabream larvae

Abstract

The improvement of microdiets for fish larvae has been a major challenge in past years. Besides their tremendous growth rates, fish larvae have an immature digestive system at early developmental stages and a progressive metamorphic process that suggests special nutritional requirements. It is therefore essential to provide fish larvae with easy and/or quickly metabolizable protein sources. While fish meal is well recognized as the reference protein source for juvenile and adult fish, its proteins maybe too complex for easy digestion in fish larvae. Moreover, there is a trend for replacement of fish meal by plant protein-rich ingredients, but these may be deficient in some micronutrients present in marine ingredients or contain anti-nutritional factors. Therefore this study aimed to study the effect of three protein sources: fish meal, squid meal and a mixture of vegetable protein concentrates, on gilthead seabream larvae performance and digestive function.