DIETARY PHOSPHORUS REQUIREMENT OF YOUNG ABALONE, HALIOTIS DISCUS HANNAI INO

Dietary phosphorus requirement of young abaloneHaliotis discus Hannai Ino

An experiment was performed to determine the dietary phosphorus requirement of the young abalone,Haliotis discus hannai. Five semi-purified diets were formulated to provide a series of graded levels of dietary total phosphorus (0.23%–1.98) from monobasic potassium phosphate (KH2P04). The brown alga,Laminaria japonica, was used as a control diet. Similar size abalone were distributed in a single-pass, flow-through system using a completely randomized design with six treatments and three replicates each treatment. The abalone were hand-fed to satiation with appropriate diets in excess, once daily at 17:00. The feeding trial was run for 120-d. Survival rate and soft-body to shell ratio (SB/S) were constantly maintained regardless of dietary treatment. However, the weight gain rate (WGR), daily increment in shell length (DISL), muscle RNA to DNA ratio (RNA/DNA), carcass levels of lipid and protein, soft-body alkaline phosphatase (SBAKP), and phosphorus concentrations of whole body (WB) and soft body (SB) were significantly (ANOVA, P<0.05) affected by the dietary phosphorus level. The dietary phosphorus requirements of the abalone were evaluated from the WGR, DISL, and RNA/DNA ratio respectively, by using second-order polynomial regression analysis. Based on these criteria, about 1.0%–1.2% total dietary phosphorus, i.e. 0.9%–1.1% dietary available phosphorus is recommended for the maximum growth of the abalone. Project 39670572 supported by the NSFC.