Results from a diet trial for the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) – should we be culturing them?

This critter seems very expensive to grow and you almost have to feed it a diet entirely of squid or fish to make some octopus. This high protein dietary requirement, plus their ingenuity in not staying put might mean putting this species in the large, growing pile of non-culturable species. I believe we should be directing the limited resources for aquaculture/fisheries research into known culturable species, into replenishing wild stocks and into looking after our environment which is the real resource.

See a previous post – https://thefishvet.com/2012/02/21/fish-are-fed-fish-to-grow-fish-should-we-be-farming-carnivores-or-vegetarians/

See the article below:

Aquaculture
Volume 369, Number 1-2 (November 2012)
	Growth and digestibility of formulated diets based on dry and freeze-dried ingredients in the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris)
	Authors:	P.S. Morillo-Velarde, J. Cerezo Valverde, M.D. Hernández, F. Aguado-Giménez, B. García García
	Author Affiliations:	no affiliations available
	Source:	Aquaculture, Volume 369, Number 1-2 (November 2012)
	Page Numbers:	139 – 144
	Available Full Text:	Full Text: Subscription Required to view full text Format: PDF Size: Unknown Location: Publisher’s Site Authentication: Publisher’s Site
	Abstract:	We studied the growth of O. vulgaris and the digestibility of two semi-moist diets (50% water) based exclusively on dry and freeze-dried ingredients (Diet S: 20% gelatin, 10% egg yolk powder, 5% Sardinella aurita and 15% Todarodes sagittatus; and Diet P: the same as the previous diet but substituting T. sagittatus by pea). Both diets had a similar macronutrient composition (70–73% protein DW, 12–13% lipids DW), a firm texture when introduced into the water and good acceptability. Survival was 100% with both diets. The specific feeding rates were also similar for both diets (1.0% body weight/day; P0.05), although the best results were obtained with diet S, which was responsible for an absolute growth rate of 9.6g/day and a feed conversion rate of 1.0, compared with the 2.2g/day and 3.9 obtained with diet P; P<0.05). The protein and lipid productive values were significantly higher for diet S than for diet P (43.6 and 13.3% vs. 20.2 and -0.5%, respectively). The good results obtained with diet S may be explained by its greater digestibility (93.3% for dry matter, 97.0% for proteins and 87.9% for lipids) compared with the corresponding value for diet P (73.8%, 92.1% and 85.0%, respectively). The findings demonstrate that O. vulgaris can be fed with dry or freeze-dried ingredients that have undergone mild heat treatments since they lead to good growth, feed efficiency and digestibility. Future studies on octopus on-growing could use a similar base to that proposed in this paper to obtain diets with better acceptability, stability or nutritional composition for commercial purposes.
	Citation:	P.S. Morillo-Velarde, J. Cerezo Valverde, M.D. Hernández, F. Aguado-Giménez, B. García García . Growth and digestibility of formulated diets based on dry and freeze-dried ingredients in the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris). Aquaculture, Volume 369, Numbers 1-2 (November 2012), pp. 139-144, <http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=4FA5AD831B216E8D179E&gt;
	URL:	http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=4FA5AD831B216E8D179E