Partial replacement of soybean meal with fermented cottonseed meal in a low fishmeal diet improves the growth, digestion and intestinal microbiota of juvenile white shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei

This study investigates the effects of replacing soybean meal with fermented cottonseed meal (FCSM) in low fishmeal diets on the growth performance, antioxidant capacity, immune capacity, digestive enzyme activities and intestinal microbiota of Litopenaeus vannamei. Six isonitrogenous and isolipidic diets were prepared, including the conventional fishmeal (250 g kg−1) group as the control, and the low fishmeal (150 g kg−1) diet used FCSM (0, 105, 210, 315 and 420 g kg−1) to replace 0 % (FCSM0), 25 % (FCSM25), 50 % (FCSM50), 75 % (FCSM75) and 100 % (FCSM100) soybean meal of the diet. Each diet was fed to four replicate groups of shrimp (0.16 ± 0.01 g) for 8 weeks. The results showed that the survival of the FCSM0 group was significantly lower than that of the other groups (P