The culture of striped catfish in the Mekong Delta is facing to the crisis about exported market and product price currently. One of solution tendency is decreasing production cost specially feed cost and harmonizing with environment in culturing. And using plant-derived protein sources is a wise solution for the first issue. However, this could lead to many negative effects such as reducing feed efficiency and increasing fecal waste of fish..., which results in deterioration of cultural water or environmental water in general because of increase dietary levels of non-starch polysaccharide (NSP) in plant ingredients. A problem is mentioned that how to formulate an effective feed that is easy to collect fecal waste, low production cost (balancing between feed cost and FCR).  Understanding the mechanism of whether and how binder (guar gum) levels and technology (especially particle sizes) affect on digestibility, feed efficiency and characteristics of fecal waste in striped catfish probably contributes to solve this issue.

The experiment was conducted with 2 different particle sizes by grinding at 0.8mm versus 1.0mm of high-cellulose-content ingredient (sunflower meal, being included at 17%) and 3 different levels of guar gum (0, 0.3, and 0.6%) were compared. Three hundred and sixty striped catfish (~85 per fish) were stocked into each of 18 170L-tank at an outdoor water temperature (around 29°C) with flow through water. Fish were fed six diet treatments (three tanks per each). Fish digestibility, feed efficiency and chemical compositions of fecal waste in GIT - gastro intestinal tract - of striped catfish were determined.