Digestibility of diets with flour fish silage for the growing of arawana (Osteoglossum bicirrhossum)

Objective. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the digestibility of different nutritional and energy components of artificial diets containing flour fishsilage used in growing of arawana fingerlings (O. bicirrhossum). Materials and methods. 240 fingerlings distributed in 12 tanks with 20 fish per experimental unit were handled, in a completely randomized design made up of 4 treatments with three replicates, each with inclusions of 0 (0ESH), 10 (10ESH), 20(20ESH) and 30% flour fish silage (30ESH) of treatments T0, T1, T2 and T3 respectively; fromflour fish silagein order to formulate isoenergetic and isonitrogenous diets in the different treatments to avoid sources of miscalculation of the experimental variables. Results. High digestibility coefficients were observed in treatments T1 (10ESH) and T3 (30ESH). The protein, lipid and energy utilization ratios were greater than 60%, which shows the importance of including flour fish silage as a source of protein to improve the various growth parameters. Significant differences between treatments were found in the increase of length (p?0.05), showing that the T1 was the best treatment with an average of 1.21±0.29 cm. Conclusions. According to the coefficients of digestibility, length increase and benefit ? cost ratio, the best treatment was T1 (10ESH) used to feed arawana (O. bicirrhossum), during the growing period, demonstrating the economic and ecological advantages for utilization of this source of protein in aquaculture.