Growth of abalone Haliotis fulgens fed diets with and without fish meal, compared to a commercial diet

In the present work, it was demonstrated that abalone viscera silage and soybean meal can be used to replace fish meal in diets for abalone without any significant difference in growth. Feeding a diet containing abalone viscera silage as the main protein source, soybean meal, corn meal, kelp meal and cellulose resulted in good growth. Abalone fed a commercial diet showed a better feed conversion efficiency (FCE). However, the experimental diet with abalone viscera silage gave higher feed consumption resulting in better growth. The dry matter loss from the pellets was highest in pellets containing abalone viscera silage (24.0%), whereas the commercial diet showed the best water stability (10.3%) followed by the fish meal diet (13.5%), Therefore, it will be necessary to achieve better water stability for the abalone viscera silage diet in order to avoid water quality problems at commercial scale. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.