Vitamin A in a diet of juvenile pacu reared in cages

Abstract

The objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of vitamin A supplementation in a diet of juvenile pacu reared in cages. Two thousand fish were used, with 66.93±15.03 g initial weight, and distributed in a completely randomized design in 20 cages of 5.0 m³, with five treatments and four replicates. The diets were formulated with 0, 3,000, 6,000, 9,000 and 12,000 UI of vitamin A per kilogram of diet, supplemented by retinyl acetate. Feeding was carried at 8:30; 1:30 and 5:30 h, until apparent satiety of animals. No difference was observed for the parameters of production performance, yield and chemical composition of the carcass, and for the blood and lipids parameters in the liver of fish fed different levels of vitamin A. The vitamin A supplementation in diets for juvenile pacu reared in cages has no effect on fish growth performance.