Abstract

Dentex juveniles of initial live weight 5 - 6 g and 108 days old after hatching, were fed three different diets for ten weeks (moist pellet (MP), imported dry pellet (IDP) and locally dry pellet (LDP)) containing three different lipid levels (26, 21 and 10% respectively) and crude protein levels (46, 45 and 47% respectively). Fatty acid composition showed that, DHA and EPA contents of moist pellet are higher than those of imported and locally dry pellets. DHA/EPA ratios of muscle were of 1.04 ± 0.00 (MP), 1.48 ± 0.57 (IDP) and 0.72 ± 0.05 (LDP). They increased in fact during feeding period for both the three tested diets while muscle’s EPA content decreased compared with its initial state when beginning this experiment. Obtained specific growth rate (SGR) by weight were 1.7, 2.4 and 2.7% and food conversion rate (FCR) were 1.8, 1.3 and 1.5 respectively for MP, IDP and LDP. While survival did not show significant difference (P>0.05), the best growth performance was observed using IDP and LDP as fish fed diets containing 47/10 and 45/21 protein/lipid ratios.

Key words: Dentex dentex, fingerlings, lipids, (n-3) HUFA, survival, growth.