Effects of Dietary Catfish and Menhaden Oils on Hybrid Striped Bass Production

Abstract

Abstract Hybrids of female striped bass Morone saxatilis and male white bass M. chrysops were stocked at 14,000 fish/ha in earthen ponds and fed an experimental diet supplementally sprayed (2.5% by weight) with either catfish oil (CO) or menhaden oil (MO). The sprayed diet contained n-3 highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFA, with four or more double bonds) at 1.10% and 1.54% of diet for CO and MO, respectively. Fish were fed to apparent satiation twice daily for 212 d in three replicate 0.05-ha ponds per diet. There were no significant differences (P < 0.05) between CO and MO diets in mean total weight offish at harvest (590 and 585 g, respectively), percent weight gain (584% and 576%), survival (87% and 91%), or feed conversion (weight of feed as fed/fish weight gain: 2.50 and 2.31). Mean intraperitoneal fat (IPF) to body weight ratios of fish were not different (4.8% for CO and 4.4% for MO). Females had a significantly higher IPF ratio (5.2%) than males (4.7%) across both diets. There were no significant...