Aquaculture 2022

February 28 - March 4, 2022

San Diego, California

EVALUATION OF PROCAP GOLD AS A REPLACEMENT FOR FISHMEAL AND SOYBEAN MEAL IN THE DIET OF HYBRID STRIPED BASS

 

Pedro L. P. F. Carvalho*, Blaine Suehs, Delbert M. Gatlin III

 

Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology

Texas AgriLife Research, Texas A&M System

 534 John Kimbrough Blvd., College Station, TX 77843-2258

pedro.puccifigueired@agnet.tamu.edu

 



Aquaculture continues to be the most rapidly growing segment of agriculture, which increases the demand and, consequently, the cost of marine feedstuffs commonly utilized in aquafeeds. Thus, many research efforts have been made to find alternatives to fishmeal, thereby lessening the dependence on these nutritious but finite resources. ProCap Gold ( PCG,  Marquis ProCap , Hennepin , IL)  is a high-protein distiller’s dried grain with solubles (DDGS) product that has shown considerable potential to replace other protein feedstuffs in the diet of tilapia. Supplementation of up to 37.5% of total dietary protein with ProCap Gold DDGS had no negative impact on growth performance, survival, condition indices, or protein conversion efficiency of Nile tilapia.  However, due to  the relatively  high lipid content of PCG ,  carnivorous species may be able to utilize higher  inclusion  levels in their formulations. As such, the current study was conducted  to evaluate the nutritional value of PCG as a substitute for fishmeal and soybean meal in the diet of hybrid striped bass ( HSB, Morone chrysops x M. saxatilis ). The reference diet was formulated to contain 40% crude protein, equall y contributed by Special Select menhaden fishmeal and soybean  meal and 13% total lipid, while the test diets contained incremental levels (20, 40, 60,  and 80% ) of the protein provided by fishmeal and soybean meal replaced with protein from the PCG product.  Each diet was fed  twice daily at a rate approaching apparent satiation  to four groups of 17 juvenile HSB (2.8 - 4.0 g/fish) stocked into 110-L aquaria operated as a recirculating system for 8 weeks.  The HSB fed the basal diet and experimental diets containing up to 40% of total protein contributed by PCG grew rapidly and increased their initial body weight by over 800% with a feed efficiency approaching 1.0 . However, as higher levels of PCG were included in the experimental diets, weight gain, feed efficiency ,  protein efficiency ratio,  survival and muscle yield were progressively reduced, whereas hepatosomatic index and intraperitoneal ratio values progressively increased.  Whole-body proximate composition of HSB fed the various diets showed a reduced moisture level as PCG inclusion increased while crude protein and ash were not significantly affected. D etermination of digestibility coefficient values for  PCG by substituting at 30% by weight in a nutritionally complete reference diet yielded reasonably high values for  crude protein, gross energy, organic matter, and phosphorus (Table 1) compared to the reference diet (Fig. 1 ). Based on these various responses, up to 40% of dietary protein contributed by fishmeal and soybean meal could be replaced with ProCap Gold without significantly affecting growth performance, condition indices or body composition of HSB juveniles.