Effects of Dietary Astaxanthin on Growth Performance, Hepatic Antioxidative Activity, hsp70, and HIF-1α Gene Expression of Juvenile Golden Pompano (Trachinotus ovatus)

The present study was conducted to investigate the effects of different astaxanthin (AST) levels on growth performance, hepatic antioxidative activity, heat shock protein 70 (hsp70), and hypoxia-inducible factor-1 alpha (HIF-1α) gene expression of juvenile golden pompano. Fish (mean initial body weight 5.8±0.05g) were fed six isonitrogenous and isoenergetic diets (AST-0, AST-0.005, AST-0.01, AST-0.05, AST-0.1, AST-0.2) containing various supplemented levels of astaxanthin (0%, 0.005%, 0.01%, 0.05%, 0.1%, 0.2%, respectively) in triplicate for 8 weeks. Growth performance (final body weight, FBW; weight gain, WG), and survival of fish fed diets containing astaxanthin above 0.01% were significantly higher (P