The effect of feeding regime on growth, feed utilisation and weight dispersion in large Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) reared in seawater

Adult Atlantic salmon were fed with an LT fish meal based high energy diet for either 1 or 22 h a day and the effects on growth, feed utilisation, body traits and size distributions were examined. Feeding regime had no significant influence on specific growth rate (0.62), thermal growth coefficient (3.82) or RNA/DNA muscle ratio. The feed conversion ratio was 1.01 for salmon growing from 3 to 5 kg, and feeding regime produced no differences in dietary digestibility, protein or energy productive values. Feeding regime had no influence on any of the body traits examined, nor did size distributions at the end of the experiment differ between treatments. This experiment demonstrates that feeding regime had no influence on any of the examined parameters. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.