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The increased demand for food fish, together with the banning of antibiotics for fish growth promotion and the greater public awareness for healthy fish production, led to an increased interest in the potential of functional feeds as health promoters. Prebiotics are functional ingredients that are used in fish, being reported to be associated with improvements in growth, feed efficiency, gut microbiota, digestive enzyme activities, gut morphology, immune status, disease resistance, intermediary metabolism, and stress responses. Those benefits may be related with the increase in gut beneficial bacteria, bacteria end-products of prebiotic fermentation, or the interaction between prebiotics and pattern recognition receptors. Due to the reported prebiotic-related positive effects in fish, a large amount of studies have been published in the last years, mainly focusing on prebiotics’ benefits to fish. Thus, the present review focuses on prebiotics’ potential as functional ingredients, focusing on their mechanisms of action. In addition, this review summarizes prebiotic effects in Mediterranean aquaculture fish, whose production has greatly increased in the last years. Finally, topics that deserve to be further explored, such as prebiotic effects related with fish age and size, and timing and duration of administration are suggested.

Under intensive culture conditions, fish are subject to increased stress owing to environmental (water quality and hypoxia) and health conditions (parasites and infectious diseases). All these factors have negative impacts on fish well-being and overall performance, with consequent economic losses. Though good management practices contribute to reduce stressor effects, stress susceptibility is always high under crowded conditions. Adequate nutrition is essential to avoid deficiency signs, maintain adequate animal performance and sustain normal health. Further, it is becoming evident that diets overfortified with specific nutrients [amino acids, essential fatty acids (FAs), vitamins or minerals] at levels above requirement may improve health condition and disease resistance. Diet supplements are also being evaluated for their antioxidant potential, as fish are potentially at risk of peroxidative attack because of the large quantities of highly unsaturated FAs in both fish tissues and diets. Functional constituents other than essential nutrients (such as probiotics, prebiotics and immunostimulants) are also currently being considered in fish nutrition aiming to improve fish growth and/or feed efficiency, health status, stress tolerance and resistance to diseases. Such products are becoming more and more important for reducing antibiotic utilization in aquafarms, as these have environmental impacts, may accumulate in animal tissues and increase bacterial resistance. This study reviews knowledge of the effect of diet nutrients on health, welfare and improvement of disease resistance in fish.

The effect of dietary carbohydrate complexity on growth, feed utilization, and glycemia was studied in European sea bass juveniles. Four isonitrogenous (50% crude protein) and isolipidic (15% crude lipids) diets were formulated to contain 20% pregelatinized maize starch (PGS diet), dextrin (DEX diet), maltose (MAL diet), or glucose (GLU diet). No effect of dietary carbohydrate complexity on growth was noticed. Feed efficiency and protein efficiency ratio were lower in fish fed the GLU diet than in the other groups, whereas the opposite was observed for feed intake. Plasma glucose peaked 3–4 h after feeding in fish fed the MAL and GLU diets, whereas in fish fed the PGS and DEX diets the peak was reached 5–6 h after feeding. Peak plasma glucose concentration (13 mmol/L) was higher in fish fed the GLU diet than the other diets (9 mmol/L). Shorter hyperglycemia duration was observed in fish fed the MALT and GLU diets (6 h) than the PGS and DEX diets (10 h). Complex carbohydrates delayed plasma glucose concentration peak compared with simple sugars, whereas the opposite was observed for hyperglycemia duration. Overall, dietary maltose, dextrin, and starch were apparently better utilized as energy source than glucose by European sea bass juveniles.

— A 8-wk trial was performed with white sea bream, Diplodus sargus, juveniles (17.3 g initial weight) to evaluate the effect of dietary lipid levels on growth performance and whole-body composition. Six experimental diets were formulated to be isoproteic (45% protein) and to contain from 9 to 24% dietary lipid levels (dry matter basis). Fish meal and fish oil were used as the main protein and lipid sources, respectively. At the end of the trial, there were no significant differences (P > 0.05) among groups in fish performance or in whole-body composition. From the results of this trial, it is concluded that, within the range of values tested, increasing dietary lipid levels above 9% has no advantage as it does not promote growth or spare protein for growth purposes.