THE INTERACTION OF DIETARY OIL SOURCE AND REARING TEMPERATURE ON GROWTH OF JUVENILE WHITE BASS MORONE CHRYSOPS

As research continues to explore ways to minimize fishmeal and fish oil in diets for commercial aquaculture, researchers must carefully scrutinize how these alternative formulations impact fish growth.  The alternative formulations have generally resulted in poor performance due to an array of reasons. However, successfully replacing these expensive dietary components can result in dramatically reduced production costs. Hybrid striped bass are a valuable food-fish as they have high consumer acceptance and are highly-marketable. White bass, the female parent of the hybrid striped bass or sunshine bass, has had relatively little research performed on it relative to striped bass, the male parent of the sunshine bass, both in terms of genetic improvement as well as broodstock or production diet influences on a particular trait.  In order to improve production, more work has to be done on broodstock improvement, alternative diet formulation, and performance assessment across multiple production environments, especially on white bass. For a viable selectively improved broodstock program to be successful, more work has to be done on the influence of nutrients on production traits of interest, such as growth, carcass characteristics, and gene by trait interaction.  The objectives of this study were to evaluate growth, body and tissue composition, survival, feed conversion, and differential gene expression of white bass (Morone chrysops) fed one of three diets containing various percentages of fish or flax oil in two different rearing environments (flow through tank system vs. recirculating system) at two rearing temperatures (~22.5°C vs. ~26.0°C) for 16 weeks. Results will be discussed.