Effects of dietary propolis supplementation on growth performance, immune responses, disease resistance and body composition of juvenile eel, Anguilla japonica

• Published in: Aquaculture international 2012-06, Vol.20 (3), p.513-523
• Main Authors: Bae, Jun-Young, Park, Gun Hyun, Lee, Jeong-Yeol, Okorie, Okorie Eme, Bai, Sungchul C.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aquaculture; Bioavailability; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Body composition; Diet; Disease; Disease resistance; Drug resistance; Environmental impact; Feed additives; Feed conversion; Fish; Freshwater & Marine Ecology; Life Sciences; Lipids; Nutrition research; Proteins; Zoology
• ISSN: 0967-6120; 1573-143X
• DOI: 10.1007/s10499-011-9482-4

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary propolis supplementation on growth performance, immune responses, disease resistance and body composition of juvenile eel, Anguilla japonica , in order to evaluate its bioavailability as a feed additive for this species. A total of 540 fish averaging 7.7 ± 0.22 g (mean ± SD) were randomly distributed into 18 tanks in groups of 30, and each tank was then randomly assigned to one of three replicates of six diets containing 0 (P 0 ), 0.25 (P 0.25 ), 0.5 (P 0.5 ), 1.0 (P 1 ), 2.0 (P 2 ) and 4.0 (P 4 ) % dietary propolis. At the end of 12 weeks of feeding trial, weight gain (WG), specific growth rate (SGR), feed efficiency (FE) and protein efficiency ratio (PER) of fish fed P 0.5 diet were significantly higher than those of fish fed P 0 , P 1 , P 2 and P 4 diets ( P