Valdemir QueIroz de Oliveira¹ , Antonio Roberto Barreto Matos² , Tacito Araujo Bezerra² , Pedro Eymard Campos Mesquita² , Valdeir Queiroz de Oliveira² , Aquiles Moreira de Moraes³ , Elenise Goncalves de Oliveira⁴ , Manuella Gazzineo de Moraes⁴ , Rommel Rocha de Sousa⁴ , Francisco Hiran Farias Costa⁴

1. Brazilian Enterprise for Agricultural Research – EMBRAPA, 64200-970, Parnaíba – PI, Brazil
2. National Department of Works against Droughts – DNOCS, 62640-000, Pentecoste – CE, Brazil
3. Higher Institute for Applied Theology – INTA, 62011-230, Sobral – CE, Brazil
4. Department of Fishing Engineering, Campus do Pici, Federal University of Ceará, 60455-760, Fortaleza – CE, Brazil
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Aquaculture, 2013, Vol. 3, No. 25   doi: 10.5376/ija.2013.03.0025
Received: 22 Aug., 2013    Accepted: 22 Sep., 2013    Published: 07 Oct., 2013

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Oliveira et al., 2013, Preliminary Studies on the Optimum Feeding Rate for Pirarucu Arapaima gigas Juveniles Reared in Floating Cages, International Journal of Aquaculture, Vol.3, No.25 147-151 (doi: 10.5376/ija.2013.03.0025)

This study aimed at testing the feeding rates on growth performance of pirarucu juveniles, Arapaima gigas, reared in cages. A 210-day experiment was conducted in four cages installed at the Pereira de Miranda reservoir (Pentecoste, Ceará, Brazil). Pirarucu juveniles (1550.0±85.0 g and 59.2±1.15 cm) were stocked at 40 fish/cage and fed four times a day with a commercial extruded feed with 40% crude protein. Fish were fed at rates of 2.0% and 3.0% body weight/day during the experiment. Growth performance was investigated in a designed experiment employing two different feeding rates and each treatment had two replicate cages. Survival was high and not significantly affected by feeding rate. Mean survival rate ranged between 91.2±1.2 and 92.5±2.5%. Feeding rate not affect significantly final mean length (89.8±3.2 to 88.7±3.5 cm), final mean weight (6800.0±170.0 to 6680.0±420.0 g) and production (46.8±0.7 to 46.0±1.2 kg/m), but FCR was significantly affected by feeding rate. Feed conversion rates were 4.32±0.08 and 2.82±0.09 for fish fed with 3% and 2% body weight/day, respectively. Therefore, the data obtained suggest that pirarucu juveniles with weight ranged from 1550.0±85.0 to 6800.0±170.0 g could be fed with feeding rate of 2.0% body weight/day.

Pirarucu; Cage; Growth performance; Feeding rate