Evaluation of Practical and Natural Diets for Juvenile Lake Herring

Abstract

Abstract Juvenile lake herring Coregonus artedi were cultured over a 5-week period in a laboratory experiment to evaluate the effects of two practical diets (dry and moist formulated feeds) and two natural diets (nauplii and decapsulated cysts of brine shrimp Artemia sp.) on hatchery production attributes. Although all fish had similar initial sizes, the final mean lengths and weights of fish fed dry formulated (82.2 mm and 4.5 g) and moist formulated (85.3 mm and 5.1 g) diets were significantly greater than those fed Artemia nauplii (66.9 mm and 2.2 g) and decapsulated cysts (59.4 mm and 1.5 g). Specific growth rates also differed among feed treatments, with lake herring that were fed formulated diets having greater mean daily percent increases in length and weight than fish fed natural diets. The mean Fulton condition factors of fish fed dry (0.78) and moist formulated diets (0.81) were significantly greater than those of fish fed Artemia nauplii (0.72) and decapsulated cysts (0.68). Greater weight gain...