Growth performance of juvenile Florida Pompano was unaffected by
differences in dietary lipid source and fatty acid composition. This,
coupled with the lack of mortalities and any other indications of
deficiency, suggests the LC-PUFA content provided by the menhaden
fish oil and fish meal included in the diets was apparently enough to
meet the essential fatty acid requirements of this species. It is known
that fish oil sparing with vegetable- or terrestrial animal-origin alternative
oils is generally successful, as long as the essential fatty acids
requirements are met (Glencross, 2009; Turchini et al., 2011a). Our experimental
formulations replaced 75% of fish oil with alternative lipids,
which is a replacement rate commonly used by the aquafeed industry at
this time (Turchini et al., 2013), most likely because this level of sparing
is ‘safe’ and unlikely to reduce dietary LC-PUFA content below levels
required by most species. Fatty acid requirements are often reported
in terms of fatty acid groupings, such as the combined EPA and/or
DHA requirement reported by the National Research Council (referred
to as a “n-3 LC-PUFA” requirement; NRC, 2011). According to this