3.6. Energy budgets
Energy budgets among all temperature and fish size groups are
shown in Table 7. In all treatments the ratios of the four terms—feces
energy (F), excretion energy (U), growth energy (G) and metabolism
energy (R)—in energy budgets to food energy (C) were affected significantly
by water temperature and fish size (P b 0.05). However,
only less than 15% of food energy was lost in feces and excretion
and the proportion of food energy allocated to growth and metabolism
was more than 80%, i.e. the value of (F + U) / C was small and a
very large portion of energy income was assimilated by cobia. In
addition, growth energy only accounted for 18–43% of assimilated
energy with a mean of 29% and most assimilated energy (A) was
expended by metabolism.