Aquaculture of the cobia is gaining popularity in Taiwan and other Asia Pacific
countries. The cobia is a carnivorous pelagic fish. It can grow with good feed
conversion efficiency in offshore net cage systems from fingerling to 4–6 kg
marketable size in 1 year. Its white flesh, which is suitable for sashimi consumption,
is highly prized. Although commercial feeds have been widely used to replace trash fish
as cobia production increases, cost-effective feeds especially formulated to maximize
growth and health of this species are yet to be developed because of the paucity of
nutritional requirement research. At present, commercial feeds based on formulas
similar to Asian sea bass or grouper feeds result in acceptable growth in cobia netcage
culture with feed conversion ratios ranging from 1.5 to 1.8. Proximate analysis of
a cobia sinking pellet feed manufactured by a Taiwanese feed mill revealed a crude
protein concentration of 45.3%, crude lipid concentration of 16.0% and ash concentration
of 11.0%.
found that the most suitable dietary protein level for maximum
growth of juvenile cobia was 44.5% when fish meal and casein were the sole protein
sources. In their study, levels of dietary protein were achieved by progressively replacing
casein (47.6–19.1%) with a-starch while fish meal remained constant at 30.1%. The
cobia grew from 33 to 283 g in 8 weeks when fed the best performing diet. When the
cobia were fed test diets containing fish meal (31%), casein (11.1%) and soy protein
(11.5%) in a second trial (Chou et al., 2001), a similar growth performance was
observed (from 41 to 328 g in 8 weeks). Use of soy protein in the diets was readily
accepted by the cobia.