A 70-day experiment was conducted to examine the effects of different macroalgal meals and lipid sources on growth, body wall composition and fatty acid (FA) profile of sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus. Two macroalgal meals including Sargassum muticum (SM) and Gracilaria lemaneiformis (GL) and two lipid sources including fish oil (FO) and vegetable oil (VO) were formulated into four diets, i.e., S. muticum and fish oil (SF), S. muticum and vegetable oil (SV), G. lemaneiformis and fish oil (GF) and G. lemaneiformis and vegetable oil (GV). The results showed that the specific growth rates (SGR) of A. japonicus fed diets containing SM were significantly higher than those fed diets containing GL. No significant differences in SGR between the FObased and VO-based groups were observed. Similar results were observed in the body wall lipid content. Most body wall FAs changed to resemble the dietary FA proportions because of the dietary effect. Concentrations of 20:4n-6 of the SF and GF groups were significantly lower than the SV and GV groups, while levels of 20:5n-3 and 22:6n-3 were significantly higher than the SV and GV groups. The n-3/ n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) ratios of the SF and GF groups were significantly higher than the SV and GV groups. Moreover, the SF group had significantly higher 20:5n-3 and 22:6n-3 contents and n-3/n-6 PUFAs ratio than the GF group.These findings reveal that the SF diet can show beneficial effects on both growth performance and body wall n-3 PUFAs content of A. japonicus.
Skin mucus has been demonstrated to provide stress biomarkers for evaluating the physiological status, providing new convenient and non‐invasive methods to detect stress response in fish. Here, we investigated the anaesthetic efficacy of tricaine methanesulphonate (MS‐222; 75–115 mg/L) for discus Symphysodon aequifasciata (34.27 ± 4.46 g; 8.10 ± 0.59 cm) using skin mucus stress biomarkers. The induction time, recovery time and respiratory frequency were also determined. According to the criteria for anaesthesia and recovery, discus fish to reach stage A3 (deep anaesthesia) within 3 min and to reach stage R4 (full recovery of normal behaviour) within 5 min were observed at 95–105 mg/L MS‐222. Respiratory frequency increased first and then decreased during MS‐222 exposure and increased after recovery. At 10 min after deep anaesthesia, a lower mucus glucose was only observed at 115 mg/L MS‐222. No change in mucus cortisol and increased lactate were observed in all treatments. Increased mucus protein was observed at 75, 85 and 95 mg/L MS‐222. At 10 min after recovery, increased mucus glucose and decreased mucus protein were observed at 85, 95 and 115 mg/L MS‐222, but increased mucus cortisol only at 115 mg/L and lactate only at 75 and 105 mg/L MS‐222. At 24 hr after recovery, mucus glucose returned to the initial level only at 75, 95 and 105 mg/L MS‐222, while cortisol at 75 and 85 mg/L and protein and lactate at 75 mg/L respectively. Overall, the effective dose of MS‐222 for discus fish has been suggested to be 95–105 mg/L.
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