Growth of Juvenile Chum Salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) Under Different Feeding Regimes
Juvenile chum salmon were fed on six different concentrations of size-selected zooplankton for 8 weeks. Zooplankton were caught daily and sorted through sieves into size-groups roughly as follows: 6–20 mm total length, mainly euphausiids; 2.5–4.5 mm, mainly copepods; and ≤ 1.5 mm, mainly small copepods. The rate of growth in weight of the fish was found to be dependent upon the concentration of the ration. Fish which were offered no food lost weight, and fish which were offered excess food increased in weight by 5.4% per day. The mean growth rate of the fish held on fixed rations ranged from 2.2 to 5.7% per day and was found to be independent of the type of prey. Electivity experiments showed that all the fish selected copepods 1.6–4.5 mm long in proportion to their abundance and rejected copepods ≤ 1.5 mm. The euphausiids were selected only by fish which had previously fed on euphausiids. The effect of variations in the availability of prey is discussed.