The Use of Poultry Corn By-Product Meal on the Growth Performance of Channel Catfish, Ictalurus punctatus

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The general structure of the work is simply and well described, and the text is clear and concise.

In my opinion, some revisions are needed to make this article acceptable for publication:

- Line 89: please indicate the general process of poultry corn by-product meal (i.e. liquid poultry waste, dried and mixed with corn)

- Table 2: proximate composition, is it referred to only one analysis or more?

- Line 159: Aquarium trial change in Recirculating Aquaculture System (RAS), as mentioned before

- Line 204: How do you have calculate the total energy for fish? 

- Table 5 and 8 please move to the Results section

Author Response

I uploaded the MS word file

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This study examined the use of a co-dried byproduct meal in diets for channel catfish. The study was well designed and the conclusions could be of interest to those involved in the culture of this and related species. I have some relatively minor issues that the authors should consider. 

- The main concern I have is that the data, especially in the first experiment, and possibly the second, should be analyzed using linear (possibly quadratic) regression. This experiment is designed this way, with graded levels of the test ingredient (independent variable) fed to fish with various responses (dependent variables) recorded. The use of ANOVA seems inappropriate to determine maximum response, as the sensitivity will be affected by the intra-treatment variability, and regression will be more powerful in this study.

- Minor comments: In table 4, all columns have 1 too many significant figures. In table 4, the survival was 100% in all treatments; why is the PSE not 0 and how can P have a value? In table 4, the authors should indicate if dry feed intake is reported on a per fish basis (same for Table 6). Tables 4 and 6, I suggest that thermal growth coefficient is a better way to express growth than percent weight gain, as the latter is overly susceptible to small differences in initial weight. The use of imperial units of measurement (acre, feet, gallons) is out of place in a scientific paper, especially for an international audience; the authors use metric measurements mostly and should use this exclusively in this paper.

Author Response

I uploaded the word file

Author Response File: Author Response.docx