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Simple Summary: The supply of fish oil, which provides long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) but is mostly wild-caught, is stagnating, resulting in limited availability and high prices. Therefore, many alternative lipid sources, mainly vegetable oils and rendered animal fats, are increasingly being applied in fish feeds. However, these lipid sources do not contain LC-PUFA, and therefore lower the fillet quality in terms of the LC-PUFA content. Feeding strategies such as alternate feeding between fish oil- and alternative oils-based diets have been applied to maintain the n-3 LC-PUFA contents in farmed fish. The present study validated the relevant efficacy. A 12-week feeding experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of replacing fish oil (FO) with beef tallow (BT) on the fatty acid composition of farmed tiger puffer (Takifugu rubripes). Two replacement strategies were used: a standard Graded Dietary Replacement of FO with BT (GDR strategy) and Alternate Feeding between FO- and BT-based Diets (AFD strategy). The positive and negative control diets were formulated with 6% FO (FO-C group) or BT (BT-C group) as the sole added lipid source. In the GDR strategy, three experimental diets were formulated, with 25, 50 and 75% of the added FO in the FO-C diet replaced with BT, named 25BT, 50BT and 75BT, respectively. In the AFD strategy, alternated feeding patterns between the FO-C and BT-C diet—namely, 1, 2 and 3 weeks with BT-C followed by 1 week feeding with FO-C (1BT-1FO, 2BT-1FO and 3BT-1FO, respectively)—were applied. Each diet or feeding strategy was assigned to triplicate tanks. The results showed that dietary BT inclusion reduced the contents of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) in both the muscle and liver (edible tissues for this species) of the experimental fish, and the liver displayed a more drastic decrease than the muscle. The LC-PUFA content linearly decreased with the decreasing dietary FO levels in the GDR strategy. However, in the AFD strategy, a linear relationship was not observed between the LC-PUFA content and the FO feeding duration. The 3BT-1FO treatment resulted in higher LC-PUFA content than 2BT-1FO. When comparing the two strategies with the same final FO administration level—namely, 50BT vs. 1BT-1FO, and in particular, 75BT vs. 3BT-1FO—the AFD strategy resulted in higher LC-PUFA contents in both the muscle and liver than the GDR strategy. In conclusion, when FO was replaced with BT in the diets, alternate feeding between FO- and BT-based diets resulted in a higher LC-PUFA content than the standard direct replacement. Three weeks of feeding with BT-C followed by one week of feeding with FO-C appeared to be a good alternate feeding pattern. This study provided a promising strategy of FO-sparing in fish farming when the LC-PUFA contents were maintained as high as possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: In some fish farming practices, cholesterol has been used as a feed additive for growth stimulation. Therefore, it is important to increase our knowledge and experience about dietary cholesterol effects on fish. This study provides useful information for the application of cholesterol in fish diets by analyzing the muscle lipidomics changes in turbot and tiger puffer in response to dietary cholesterol supplementation. Exogenous cholesterol has been supplemented into aqua-feeds due to the reduced proportions of fishmeal and fish oil. This study aimed to investigate the effects of dietary cholesterol supplementation on the muscle lipidomics of two marine fish species, turbot and tiger puffer. A 70-day feeding trial was conducted, where two low-fishmeal diets supplemented with 0 or 1% cholesterol were used. The lipidomic analysis with targeted tandem mass spectrometry showed that, in turbot, a total of 49 individual lipids exhibited significant differences in their abundance in response to dietary cholesterol, whereas the number was 30 for tiger puffer. Dietary cholesterol up-regulated the abundance of cholesterol and cholesterol ester in both species. In turbot, the dietary cholesterol also increased the abundance of triacylglycerol and acylcarnitine, whereas in tiger puffer, it primarily regulated the abundance of phospholipids and BMP. This was the first time the responses of marine fish muscle lipidomics to dietary cholesterol supplementation have been investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Booming fish farming results in a relative shortage of fish oil (FO) supply, meaning that alternative oils are increasingly used in fish feeds, which leads to reduction of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFAs) and other relevant changes in fish products. This study investigated the efficacy of an FO-finishing strategy in recovering the muscle quality of farmed tiger puffer. An eight-week feeding trial (growing-out period) was conducted with five experimental diets, in which graded levels (0 (control), 25, 50, 75, and 100%) of added FO were replaced by poultry oil (PO). Following the growing-out period was a four-week FO-finishing period, during which fish in all groups were fed the control diet. Dietary PO significantly decreased the muscle LC-PUFA content, whereas in general, the FO-finishing strategy recovered it to a level comparable with that of the group fed FO continuously. The recovery efficiency of EPA was higher than that of DHA. Dietary PO also led to changes of volatile flavor compounds in the muscle, such as butanol, pentenal, and hexenal, whereas the FO-finishing strategy mitigated the changes. In conclusion, the FO-finishing strategy is promising in recovering the LC-PUFA and volatile-flavor-compound composition in farmed tiger puffer after the feeding of PO-based diets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]