THE EFFECT OF FEEDING REGIME ON GROWTH, FEED-UTILIZATION AND WEIGHT DISPERSION IN LARGE ATLANTIC SALMON (SALMO-SALAR) REARED IN SEAWATER

Adult Atlantic salmon were fed with an LT fish meal based high energy diet for either 1 or 22 h a day and the effects on growth, feed utilis ation, body traits and size distributions were examined. Feeding regim e had no significant influence on specific growth rate (0.62), thermal growth coefficient (3.82) or RNA/DNA muscle ratio. The feed conversio n ratio was 1.01 for salmon growing from 3 to 5 kg, and feeding regime produced no differences in dietary digestibility, protein or energy p roductive values. Feeding regime had no influence on any of the body t raits examined, nor did size distributions at the end of the experimen t differ between treatments. This experiment demonstrates that feeding regime had no influence on any of the examined parameters. (C) 1998 E lsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.