Dietary medicinal herbs and enzyme treated fish meal improve stress resistances and growth performance at early juvenile stage of red sea bream Pagrus major

Red sea bream Pagrus major (RSB) weighing 0.09 g were fed on test diets, composed of 65% fish meal supplemented with 0.49% Crataegi fructus (Cf) and a mixture of Massa medicata, Cf, Artemisia capillaries and Cnidium officinale (HM) or a control diet without herbs, in trial 1. After air exposure and anaesthesia treatment, higher stress tolerances were obtained in herbal groups than control group. Moreover, after challenge test with Vibrio anguillarum, mortalities of the herbal groups were lower than the control group. There was no significant difference in growth performance among the treatments. Feed efficiency (FE) of the test groups was 124–141%. In trial 2, RSB weighing 0.11 g were fed on diets composed of 35% fish meal and 30% enzyme treated fish meal (EFM) with the same herbal treatments as trial 1. The herbal groups revealed higher final body weight and specific growth rate (SGR) and lower daily feed intake than those of the control group. The FE of test groups was 172–203%. These results indicate that the dietary herbs supplementation acts not only as recovery enhancer for some rearing stresses but also as growth enhancer, which is accelerated with dietary EFM in the early juvenile stage of red sea bream.