Morphological and physiological evaluation of common carp (Cyprinus carpio L., 1758) fed extruded compound feeds containing different fat levels

Abstract

The study was carried out to examine morphological and physiological effects of different levels of fat in compound extruded feed for carp. A 90 days experiment was performed in tanks with water flow 0.34 L min(-1), stocked each with 29 specimens of carp, average weight 15.4 +/- A 4.2 g. The fish was fed 3 diets containing 38 % protein and 8, 12 or 16 % of fat (feed L8, L12, and L16, respectively). Body weight gain, specific growth rate, food conversion ratio, feed efficiency ratio, condition factor, liver and intestine histology and morphometry and some blood biochemical parameters were analysed. At the end of the experiment, a difference was established between the fish fed L8 feed compared to carp fed L12 and L16 feed for all growth parameters. For several other parameters, nuclear area of hepatocytes, nuclear/cytoplasm ratio, enterocytes height and intestinal folds' length, a difference between carp fed feed L8 compared to feed L16 was found. The histological analysis revealed that normal structure of the liver and intestine prevailed, but changes were observed regardless of the diet type. In the hepatopancreas, more prominent changes were found around pancreatic tissue-particularly, increased number and size of adipocytes. Although blood biochemical parameters were within normal values, a difference between L8 and L16 diet-fed carp was found for plasma levels of triglycerides and total proteins. According to the results obtained in this study, the best results were achieved using a feed with 8 % fat.