Thinking of breeding fish and growing them out? This paper describes that feeding regimes most conducive to growth do not necessarily maximize reproductive success in the zebra danio. Feeding frequency for reproductive success is once every couple of days to to 3x/day, whereas to maximise growth rate, feeding them 5x/day is optimal.
| Aquaculture | |||||||||||||||||
| Volume 369, Number 1-2 (November 2012) | |||||||||||||||||
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The effects of feeding frequency on growth and reproduction in zebrafish (Danio rerio) | ||||||||||||||||
| Authors: | Christian Lawrence, Jason Best, Althea James, Kara Maloney | ||||||||||||||||
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| Source: | Aquaculture, Volume 369, Number 1-2 (November 2012) | ||||||||||||||||
| Page Numbers: | 103 – 108 | ||||||||||||||||
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| Abstract: | In the present study, we examined the effects of feeding regime on growth and reproductive performance in wild-type zebrafish (Danio rerio) maintained on a recirculating aquaculture system. Starting at 30days post-fertilization (dpf), we fed 8 replicate groups of age and strain matched fish a pelleted formulated diet (Gemma Micro 300, Skretting) either once every other day (EOD), one time (1×), three times (3×) or five times (5×) a day to achieve a total daily feed input of 5% of body weight per day compared against a “standard” control (C) of Artemia salinanauplii/metanauplii three times daily to apparent satiation. Fish in each treatment group were weighed and measured for fork length once every other week until 150dpf. We evaluated the effects of these feeding regimes on reproductive performance (breeding success, fecundity, and embryo viability) by setting up randomly sampled fish from each replicate groups in small group crosses (2 males, 3 females) once every other week starting at 76dpf until the experiment was terminated at 191dpf. Growth performance was significantly affected by feeding regime, especially in female fish, where fish in the 1×, 3×, and 5× groups were significantly (p<0.05, one way ANOVA) longer and heavier than fish in control and EOD groups at the end of experiment. Feeding regime had a less clear effect on reproductive performance. Mean fecundity and embryo viability varied little between groups, but the fish fed EOD, 1× and 3× showed significantly higher rates (p<0.05) of breeding success than the control and 5× groups. These results suggest that feeding regimes most conducive to growth do not necessarily maximize reproductive success in this species. | ||||||||||||||||
| Citation: | Christian Lawrence, Jason Best, Althea James, Kara Maloney . The effects of feeding frequency on growth and reproduction in zebrafish (Danio rerio). Aquaculture, Volume 369, Numbers 1-2 (November 2012), pp. 103-108, <http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=429B9A2DF011828948DD> | ||||||||||||||||
| URL: | http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=429B9A2DF011828948DD | ||||||||||||||||
