14/04/14: Feed Work On Red Drum

Red Drum was named as giving a good result with court-bouillon in a cookbook published in New Orleans in 1901. In the early 1980s, the chef Paul Prudhomme made his dish of Cajun-style blackened red drum popular. In 2009 red drum was the "secret ingredient" on the television program Iron Chef America, with competitors Mourad Lahlou and Cat Cora both preparing several dishes from the fish. 

It has excellent potential as an aquaculture species especially if the feed issues can be improved.Two important pieces of research are detailed in the current Journal of WAS relating to feeds for Red Drum (Sciaenops ocellatus), also known as Channel Bass.

In the first study ‘Replacement of Fish Meal with Plant Feedstuffs in the Diet of Red Drum: Effects on Production Characteristics and Tolerance to Aquaculture-Related Stressors’ by Moxley, Rossi, Buentello, Pohlenz, Gatlin and Tomasso they evaluated partial (50 and 75%) replacement of fish meal in red drum diets with soy protein concentrate and barley protein concentrate. Growth, feed efficiency, survival, tolerance to low temperature, and tolerance to handling in warm, hyper-saline water were evaluated. Only the diet with a 50% replacement of fish meal with Soy protein yielded results comparable to fish fed a non-substituted fish meal diet. However, the low-temperature studies were complicated by differences in mean fish weight among the groups. The results of this study indicate Soy protein may be partially substituted for fish meal in red drum diets.

Augustin Théodule Ribot: The cook and the cat (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the second study ‘Effects of Various Levels of Silica Ash in the Diet of Juvenile Red Drum’by Mendoza-Rodriguez and Gatlin III investigates one group of alternative feedstuffs includes lipid-extracted algae (LEA) by-products from algae production for biofuels. Most LEA by-products are known to contain relatively high levels of ash ranging from 20 to 30% of dry weight. Thus, inclusion of LEA by-products in aquafeeds may contribute a substantial amount of ash, which potentially could have negative effects on utilization of other nutrients. To study the ash component of LEA by-products, diatomaceous earth was used as a homogeneous source of silica ash. No apparent histological changes in the gastrointestinal tract of fish fed the graded levels of ash were observed in the tests. Therefore, inclusion of algae by-products in diets of red drum will not be limited due to their contribution of ash.

Sources: (1) (2)

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