Replacement of fish meal by meat and bone meal in diets for juvenile snakehead Ophiocephalus argus

A 10-week feeding trial was conducted to evaluate the effects of replacing fish meal (FM) with meat and bone meal (MBM) on growth and body composition of juvenile snakehead Ophiocephalus argus. Six approximately isonitrogenous (450 g kg−1 crude protein) and isoenergetic (18.5 MJ kg −1 gross energy) diets were formulated by replacing 0, 200, 400, 600, 800 and 1000 g kg−1 FM protein with MBM protein, and the diets were designated as control, MBM20, MBM40, MBM60, MBM80 and MBM100, respectively. Each diet was fed to triplicate groups of fish with initial mean body weight of 12.11 ± 0.08 g (mean ± SD) in floating cages in an earthen pond, and each cage was initially stocked with 40 fish. Both specific growth rate (SGR) and protein efficiency ratio (PER) in the control and MBM20 group had no significant differences (p > 0.05), but were significantly higher (p < 0.05) than the other groups, and MBM100 showed the lowest SGR and PER. Whole-body crude protein decreased significantly with increasing dietary MBM levels (p < 0.05). These results indicated that MBM could replace 20 % of FM protein in diets of snakehead without negative effect on growth and feed utilization.