Digestive enzymatic activity of pirarucu “amazon cod” using live food during initial feeding training
International Journal of Development Research
Digestive enzymatic activity of pirarucu “amazon cod” using live food during initial feeding training
Received 18th October, 2020; Received in revised form 26th November, 2020; Accepted 11th December, 2020; Published online 30th January, 2021
Copyright © 2021, Bruno Adan Sagratzki Cavero, Daniel Rabello Ituassu, Thiago Marinho-Pereira, Flávio Augusto Leão da Fonseca and Manoel Pereira-Filho. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The objective of this work was to verify the digestive enzymatic activity of pirarucu (Arapaima gigas) using live food during initial feeding training. A total of 804 juveniles of pirarucu were homogeneously distributed in six circular PVC tanks with a capacity of 500 L (400 L water volume) and a flow rate of 10 L h-1. The experiment was conducted in three phases, four days for each phase. First phase: providing live food diluted in water; Second phase: providing live food diluted in water with gradual introduction of feed in the proportion of 1%, 2%, and 3% of total fish biomass; Third phase: fishes were fed only with feed until they were satiated. During the feeding period, fishes were fed six times a day: 08:00, 10:00, 12:00, 14:00, 16:00 and 18:00 h. Two types of live prey were tested in triplicate: T1 = nauplii of Artemia sp.; T2 = mixture of native zooplankton. At the end of experiments, the results of weight gain, the percentage of animals that ate and survival did not present any significant statistical differences between treatments (p > 0.05). Artemia sp. and Amazon zooplankton mix are efficient for the initial feeding training of pirarucu.
