Growth and Survival of Juvenile Paddlefish, Polyodon spathula, Fed Two Dietswith Different Proteins and Fat Levels

Paddlefish, Polyodon spathula, is receiving increasing attention as a food fish for aquaculture. In addition, several states of the US that are within the native range of paddlefish propagate them for mitigation and sport fishing programs. There is little published information on intensive culture of juvenile paddlefish. Developing a culture method that require feed training with prepared diets should provide more consistent production and sufficient numbers of juveniles to support aquaculture. In this study, we compared survival and production of juvenile paddlefish fed two commercially available diets: a 45% protein, 16% fat trout diet (TD) and a 32% protein, 4.5% fat catfish diet (CD). There were no significant differences (P \u3e 0.05)in survival (96% TD vs. 95% CD) and net production (1032 kg/ha TD vs. 1071 kg/ha CD). Cost analysis indicates that using CD would be more cost effective than using TD for feeding juvenile paddlefish. Therefore, CD provided the needed nutrition for high survival and production of juvenile paddlefish at a lower cost than TD