Atlantic Cod Aquaculture – Healthy Growth & Excellent Feed Conversion
Aquaculture of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua L.) is a promising but challenging business and while the industry made huge progress during the last decade, there is still a lot of room for improvements.
Cooperating with the Norwegian cod-fry producer HAVLANDET MARIN YNGEL TORSK A/S gave us the opportunity to conduct a comprehensive trial series to further investigate the Atlantic cod and its great potential as an emerging aquaculture species. The successful fry feed trial series was continued with the evaluation of ALLER AQUA’s grower feed OCEAN QUANTUM EX against a competitor’s premium cod feed. Throughout this growing-stage, special attention was given not only to performance parameters and survival rates, but to deformities and gut-health as well.
During the fry feed trials, we already observed that the combination of the latest generation of Atlantic cod fry, careful handling and optimal environmental parameters mostly solves the problem of deformities that caused high economic losses when Atlantic cod was first introduced as aquaculture species in the late 1990’s. This observation was confirmed in the grow-out stage without any significant dietary influences.
Additionally, there were no signs of intestinal inflammations that remain a major issue in modern cod farming. In terms of performance, OCEAN QUANTUM EX outperformed the competition with an improved feed efficiency of 15% which was caused by both, a higher energy density of the feed and an improved retention of nutrients. On top of the better feed conversion, fish that received OCEAN QUANTUM EX showed a higher daily growth and consequently final individual body weights.
