Effect of Fasting and Refeeding on Juvenile Leopard Mandarin Fish Siniperca scherzeri

SIMPLE SUMMARY: The development of live prey feed domestication techniques for the carnivorous leopard mandarin fish (Siniperca scherzeri) requires establishing nutritionally complete diets and research into optimal feeding regimes. Accordingly, the purpose of this experiment was to investigate the effects of varied feeding regimes for S. schezeri on compensatory growth. Individuals were divided into a daily feeding control group (C), a 5-day fasting group (F5), a 10-day fasting group (F10), and a 14-day fasting group (F14). The results demonstrated that after four weeks of treatment, all experimental groups experienced full compensatory growth and reached the control group weight. Therefore, this information will be valuable for effective management when fasting is necessary in S. schezeri aquaculture. ABSTRACT: To verify the effect of fasting on juvenile leopard mandarin fish (Siniperca scherzeri mean weight, 14.7 g), compensatory growth, body composition, and blood content of juveniles were investigated for six weeks following two-week feeding treatments: fed continuously (control), and fasted for 5 (F5), 10 (F10) and 14 days (F14). Full compensatory growth was evident after four weeks of food resupply in all fasting groups. Specific growth rate, feeding rate, and feed efficiency in all fasting groups were significantly higher than those of the control after the first 2 weeks of food resupply. At the end of fasting, the lipid content, ratio of lipid to lean body mass, hepatosomatic and viscerosomatic indices in all fasting groups, or total cholesterol content in F14 significantly decreased compared to the control. These results indicated that juvenile leopard mandarin fish subjected to 5–14 days of food deprivation could achieve full compensatory growth after feeding resumption for 4 weeks and that the morphological and biochemical indices, as well as body and blood composition, remained comparable to the control group after the completion of the study under our experimental conditions.