Growth and survival of spiny lobster, Panulirus homarus fed fresh food and formulated diet

Abstract

To date, lobster aquaculture relies on fresh food for feeding; however, the availability of fresh food is limited and its excessive use causes environmental degradation. Therefore, formulated diet is required to establish sustainable lobster aquaculture. Concerning this issue, this study was carried out to assess the growth and survival of spiny lobster Panulirus homarus fed fresh food and formulated diet. The study was conducted in a completely randomized design (CRD) with 3 groups of treatments and 3 replicates for each treatment. Feeding experiment was performed in a flow-through water system using 9 fibre tanks, 4000 L in volume. Each tank was stocked with 40 lobsters, with initial weight of 78.08 ± 0.22 g. Each group of lobsters was fed with fresh food (A), formulated diet (pellet) (B) and a combination of pellet and fresh food (C). The fresh food was a mixture of fish, crabs, shrimp and small mussel (3:1:1:1). Feeding experiment was done for 15 weeks. Results of the experiment showed that the highest specific growth rate of lobster was obtained from lobsters fed with the combination of pellet and fresh food (0.52 ± 0.02 %/day) and the lowest growth was resulted from lobsters fed formulated diet (0.16 ± 0.03 %/day). In contrast, the highest survival was achieved in lobsters fed formulated diet (51.67%). Whereas the lowest survival was found in lobsters fed fresh food (10%). This study indicated that good growth of lobster was resulted from feeding with formulated diet combined with fresh food, while good survival was supported by feeding with formulated diet.