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International Journal of Aquaculture, 2013, Vol.3, No.25, 147
-
151
http://ija.sophiapublisher.com
147
A letter Open Access
Preliminary Studies on the Optimum Feeding Rate for Pirarucu
Arapaima gigas
Juveniles Reared in Floating Cages
Valdemir Queiroz de Oliveira
1
, Antônio Roberto Barreto Matos
2
, Tacito Araújo Bezerra
2
, Pedro Eymard Campos Mesquita
2
,
Valdeir Queiroz de Oliveira
2
, Aquiles Moreira de Moraes
3
, Elenise Gonçalves de Oliveira
4
, Manuella Gazzineo de Moraes
4
,
Rommel Rocha de Sousa
4
, Francisco Hiran Farias Costa
4
1. Brazilian Enterprise for Agricultural Research – EMBRAPA, 64200-970, Parnaíba – PI, Brazil
2. National Department of Works against Droughts – DNOCS, 62640-000, Pentecoste – CE, Brazil
3. Higher Institute for Applied Theology – INTA, 62011-230, Sobral – CE, Brazil
4. Department of Fishing Engineering, Campus do Pici, Federal University of Ceará, 60455-760, Fortaleza – CE, Brazil
Corresponding author email: hiran1968@hotmail.com;
Authors
International Journal of Aquaculture, 2013, Vol.3, No.25 doi: 10.5376/ija.2013.03.0025
Received: 22 Aug., 2013
Accepted: 22 Sep., 2013
Published: 07 Oct., 2013
Copyright © 2013
Oliveira et al., This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article
:
Oliveira et al., 2013, Preliminary Studies on the Optimum Feeding Rate for Pirarucu
Arapaima gigas
Juveniles Reared in Floating Cages, International Journal
of Aquaculture, Vol.3, No.25 147-151 (doi: 10.5376/ija.2013.03.0025)
Abstract
This study aimed at testing the feeding rates on growth performance of pirarucu juveniles,
Arapaima gigas
, reared in
cages. A 210-day experiment was conducted in four cages installed at the Pereira de Miranda reservoir (Pentecoste, Ceará, Brazil).
Pirarucu juveniles (1550.0±85.0 g and 59.2±1.15 cm) were stocked at 40 fish/cage and fed four times a day with a commercial
extruded feed with 40% crude protein. Fish were fed at rates of 2.0% and 3.0% body weight/day during the experiment. Growth
performance was investigated in a designed experiment employing two different feeding rates and each treatment had two replicate
cages. Survival was high and not significantly affected by feeding rate. Mean survival rate ranged between 91.2±1.2 and 92.5±2.5%.
Feeding rate not affect significantly final mean length (89.8±3.2 to 88.7±3.5 cm), final mean weight (6800.0±170.0 to 6680.0±420.0 g)
and production (46.8±0.7 to 46.0±1.2 kg/m
3
), but FCR was significantly affected by feeding rate. Feed conversion rates were
4.32±0.08 and 2.82±0.09 for fish fed with 3% and 2% body weight/day, respectively. Therefore, the data obtained suggest that
pirarucu juveniles with weight ranged from 1550.0±85.0 to 6800.0±170.0 g could be fed with feeding rate of 2.0% body weight/day.
Keywords
Pirarucu; Cage; Growth performance; Feeding rate
Introduction
In the last years, the Brazilian aquaculture industry
has attempted to select new species of fish in order to
diversify its production (Núñez et al., 2011; Oliveira
et al., 2012; Silva et al., 2012, Fiúza et al., 2013).
Pirarucu is an exclusively air breathing fish native
from the Amazon Basin. This species is considered to
be one of the largest freshwater scale fishes in the
world, as well as one of the species with the greatest
potential for being cultivated in the Amazon (Roubach
et al., 2003). According to Saint-Paul (1986), pirarucu
reaches up to 200 kg in weight and up to 3 m in length,
and is capable of living longer than 50 years. Pirarucu
has the fastest growth among Amazonian cultivated
fishes, growing at 27-41 g/day and reaching 10-15
kg/year (Bard and Imbiriba, 1986; Imbiriba, 2001;
Pereira-Filho et al., 2003; Núñez, 2009; Rebaza et al.,
2010). However, to the present there has been little
research into the zootechnical and economically
feasible to this species (Ono et al., 2003; Oliveira et
al., 2012). Pirarucu may be suitable for cage culture
because it is a species which tolerates crowding, but to
date there has been little research into the use of cages.
Fish feeding is one of the most important factors in
commercial fish farming because feeding regime may
have consequences on growth rate of fish (Okorie et
al., 2013). Several studies have shown that growth
correlates to food intake (Wang et al. 2007; Ozorio et
al. 2009). Feeding rate has a pronounced effect on
growth rate and feed e
ffi
ciency of fishes. Therefore,
optimal feeding rate is important not only for
promoting best survival and growth and minimizing
feed conversion rate, but also for economic and
environmental reasons, preventing including water
quality deterioration (Eroldogan et al., 2004; De Riu
et al., 2012; Okorie et al., 2013).
Currently, there is no published information on the