Long Term Feeding Effects of Dietary Dehulled Soybean Meal as a Fish Meal Replacer in Growing Olive Flounder Paralichthys olivaceus

This experiment was conducted to evaluate the long term effects of dehulled soybean meal (DHSM) as fish meal (FM) replacer in the diet for olive flounder, Paralichthys olivaceus, for 42 wk at a commercial fish farm. The four experimental diets were MP (moist pellet based on raw fish), $DHSM_0$ (fish meal based dry pellet), $DHSM_{30}$ (30% fish meal was replaced by DHSM) and COMD (commercial dry pellet). Fish were fed one of the four diets containing 50% crude protein and 16.7 kJ available energy/kg diet for 42 wk. Fish averaging $3.20{\pm}0.04g$ ($mean{\pm}SD$) were initially distributed to each tank as a group of 6,000 fish reared in a flow-through system. At the end of the experiment, average body weight of fish was $315{\pm}9.3g$ ($mean{\pm}SD$) ). Weight gain (WG) and feed efficiency (FE) of fish fed MP, DHSM0 and DHSM30 showed no significant difference among the diet treatments. However, WG and FE of fish fed MP were significantly higher than those of fish fed COMD (p<0.05). Specific growth rate (SGR), protein efficiency ratio (PER) and survival of fish fed all diets were not significantly different among the dietary treatments. Therefore, these results indicate that DHSM could replace up to 30% white fish meal with amino acid supplementation in olive flounder diets for long-term feeding practice at the commercial farm.