Abstract
Salt water recirculation systems using automatic feeders are a new frontier for marine aquaculture. It is possible to decrease the vulnerability of the traditional fish farming in open systems and reduce wasteful feeding and discharge of effluents, as well as increase the economic returns. An experiment with common snook fingerings (4.31 ± 1.42 g and 8.4 ± 1.0 cm) was performed. Three feeding treatments were evaluated: six, twelve and eighteen feeding times per day. Each treatment had three replications. Among the three tested frequencies (fed 6, 12 and 18 times a day), the feeding frequency of 12 times per day (every two hours) showed the best values of the parameters evaluated for production performance. The final weight values, condition factor, specific growth rate and daily weight gain of the treatment 12 feeding times per day were all significantly higher than the lower and higher frequencies. Our results demonstrate that high feeding frequency is not synonymous of higher performance, but is extremely necessary to find out the best range for the target species. Besides, this relationship between feeding frequency and growth performance might change over weight range. Therefore, future studies should address higher weight ranges for comparison to our results.
Highlights
The common snook Centropomus undecimalis (Bloch, 1792) is a marine finfish, that occurs from the United States to Southern of Brazil
Our results demonstrate that high feeding frequency is not synonymous of higher performance, but is extremely necessary to find out the best range for the target species
Water quality parameters showed that the system used for recirculation was effective in maintaining the quality of water suitable for the maintenance of the common snook
Summary
The common snook Centropomus undecimalis (Bloch, 1792) is a marine finfish, that occurs from the United States to Southern of Brazil. The species has resilience to traditional management systems used in aquaculture enterprises (Nunes, 2013). The economic viability of the species has been proven (Sanches et al, 2014a) and. 505-509 several scientific advances have been made to optimize the supply of young forms to producers (Ibarra-Castro et al, 2011; Sanches et al, 2013). There is still a lack of knowledge about optimal management practices that can lead to the expression of all their full potential as an aquaculture candidate.
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