Distillers Dried Grain from Makgeolli By-product Is Useful as a Dietary Ingredient for Growth of Juvenile Sea Cucumber Apostichopus japonicus

We tested the effects of various distillers dried grains (DDGs) in a formulated diet on growth and body composition of juvenile sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus. DDG is a solid residue obtained by filtering an aqueous mixture of fermented rice with Aspergillus oryzae and yeasts. Six isonitrogenous and isocaloric diets (DDG0, DDG-G, DDG-C, DDG-K, DDG-W, and DDG-P) were formulated to contain 20% DDG obtained from different Makgeolli factories. Juvenile sea cucumber (average weight, $2.1{\pm}0.02$ g) were randomly distributed in eighteen 50-L rectangular plastic tanks (40 L of water each) in a seawater flow-through system at a density of 50 juveniles/tank. Three replicate groups of sea cucumber were fed each of the six experimental diets at a feeding rate of 5% body weight per day for 22 weeks. At the end of the feeding experiment, survival and weight gain of the juvenile sea cucumber were not affected by the type of dietary DDG (P > 0.05), and the proximate and amino acid compositions of the whole body were not affected by dietary DDG diets (P > 0.05). These results indicate that rice-based DDG is a potential dietary ingredient that could be used at dietary concentrations of up to 20% for growth of juvenile sea cucumber.