The Effect of Feeding Regimen on Mixed-Size Pond-Grown Channel Catfish, Ictalurus punctatus

The culture of channel catfish, Ictalurus punctatus, is an established industry in many areas of the southern United States. Improvements in feeding regimens would economically benefit producers. The present research was designed to evaluate the effect of feeding time (AM vs. PM), feeding frequency (one vs. two times a day) and intermittent fasting (6 days of feeding, 1 day of fasting) on production, feed conversion ratio (FCR), survival, weight-length relationship, percent dressout (headed and gutted carcass per unit live weight), and body composition of channel catfish reared in earthen ponds. Treatments consisted of: (1) feeding catfish once daily to satiation at 0800; (2) feeding catfish once daily to satiation at 1800; (3) feeding catfish twice daily at 0800 and 1800; and (4) feeding catfish once daily at 0800 for six consecutive days followed by one day of fasting. Twenty 0.04-ha ponds were stocked with 135 sub-market (average size: 182.6 g/fish) catfish and 600 fingerlings (average size: 18.2 g/fish), resulting in a total density of 18,375 fish/ha. Each treatment was assigned to five ponds at random. Guangbing Wu, I. Patrick Saoud, Christian Miller, and D. Allen Davis, Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures, Swingle Hall 203, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849-5419. Address correspondence to: D. Allen Davis at the above address. Journal of Applied Aquaculture, Vol. 15(3/4) 2004 http://www.haworthpress.com/web/JAA  2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Digital Object Identifier: 10.1300/J028v15n03_09 115 Please note that this electronic prepublication galley may contain typographical errors and may be missing artwork, such as charts, photographs, etc. Pagination in this version will differ from the published version. Fish in all treatments were offered a commercial floating catfish diet. A portion of the marketable catfish were harvested in mid-summer and the ponds completely harvested in the fall. Production parameters (e.g., biomass, weight gain, FCR, and survival), percent dressout, and weightlength relationship of catfish did not differ among the four treatments (P > 0.05). Percent dry matter and percent lipid of the fillet of fish fed once daily at 0800 seven days a week were significantly higher than those of fish in all other treatments (P 0.05). The percent crude protein of the fillet of fish fed once daily at 1800 seven days a week was significantly higher than fish fasted one day a week (P 0.05). These results indicate that as long as the fish are fed to apparent satiation there is no advantage to multiple feedings, to feeding at a specific time of day, or to intermittent fasting in earthen ponds. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website:  2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]