Optimum temperature for the growth performance of juvenile orange-spotted grouper (Epinephelus coioides H.)

Effects of water temperature (17, 21, 25, 30 and 35°C) and body size (14.75–281.41 g initial body weight) on food consumption, growth, feed conversion, and dry matter content in orange-spotted grouper fed to satiation were investigated. The combined effect of temperature (T, °C) and body weight (W, g) on maximum food consumption (C max, g/day) was described as: lnC max=−7.411+0.828 lnW+0.317T−0.004 7T 2, and the optimum feeding temperature was 33.9°C. The combined effect of temperature and body weight on growth (G) was described as: lnG=−4.461−0.208lnW+0.394T−0.006 3T 2. The optimum growth temperature was 31.4°C, whereas overall growth rates were high at 25, 30 and 35 °C. Feed conversion efficiencies (FCE, %), increasing first and then decreasing with increasing temperature, averaged from 1.8 to 2.1 in terms of dry weight of food fish. The optimum temperature for FCE tended to be lower than that for growth or feeding. Dry matter content increased with both increasing water temperature (17, 25, 30 and 35°C) and body weight, and the combined effect of temperature and body weight on dry matter content (DM, %) was described as: lnDM=3.232+0.01 4 lnW−0.004 4T+0.001 2TlnW.