Effects of dietary supplementation with natural carotenoid sources on growth performance and skin coloration of fancy carp, Cyprinus carpio L.

Abstract

We evaluated the effects of natural carotenoid sources on the growth performance and skin pigmentation of <em>Cyprinus carpio</em>. Samples with mean initial weight of 51.23±5.04 g were fed with four experimental diets in quadruplicate for 8 weeks: A control diet without carotenoid supplementation and three other diets with three different kinds of natural carotenoid sources, <em>Phafia rhodozyma</em>, <em>Paracoccus </em>sp., and <em>Haematococcus pluviallis</em>, at a level of 45 mg kg^-1 total carotenoids. The growth and feed utilization efficiency did not significantly differ between the dietary treatments (<em>p</em>>0.05). The lightness (L*) in the red zone of the fish on the control diet tend to increase significantly from the other treatments (<em>p</em><0.05). The <em>P. rhodozyma </em>diet provided the highest redness (a*) and chroma (C*), and a strongly reddish hue (H°), with a significant difference to the other diets (<em>p</em><0.05). The yellowness (b*) in the red and the white zones had no significant difference between the dietary treatments (<em>p</em>>0.05). In addition, the fish fed with a <em>P. rhodozyma</em> diet had high accumulated carotenoid levels in the red and the white scales, as well as in the serum. Furthermore, the carotenoid deposition capacity was higher in the fish skin than in the scales and the serum, and the carotenoids were deposited more in the red than in the white tissues. The results indicate that diet supplementation with <em>P. rhodozyma </em>enhances the red skin color of fancy carp.