Amending reduced fish-meal feeds with marine lecithin, but not soy lecithin, improves the growth of juvenile cobia and may attenuate heightened responses to stress challenge

Sparing of marine resources in aquafeeds can be environmentally and economically advantageous; however, fish meal (FM) replacement can affect the production performance and physiological competence. Phospholipids are increasingly understood to be involved in maintaining growth and vigour in fish and may be deficient in reduced FM formulations. Accordingly, we evaluated the growth and stress tolerance of juvenile cobia fed typical (50% FM) or reduced FM feeds (12% FM) with or without phospholipid amendment [1% marine lecithin (12% FM + Marine PL) or soy lecithin (12% FM + Soy PL)] for 6 weeks in triplicate tanks (N = 3) in a recirculation aquaculture system. The 50% FM feed yielded significantly superior growth and growth efficiency in comparison with the 12% FM and 12% FM+ Soy PL feeds, but the 12% FM+ Marine PL feed yielded comparable results to 50% FM feed. A low-water stress challenge induced elevated plasma glucose, cortisol and lactate levels in all treatments. However, a significant interaction (diet x stress) effect suggested a lesser cortisol response among fish fed the 12% FM+ Marine PL and 50% FM diets. These findings demonstrate that growth performance and, perhaps, resilience of cobia raised on reduced FM feeds may be improved by the addition of marine-origin phospholipid to the diet.