ABSTRACT
Gastric digestion in fishes has drawn research interest over recent decades. Several techniques (serial slaughter, X-radiography, gastric lavage and radio isotopic) and mathematical models (linear, square-root, exponential, power exponential, logistic and Gompertz equation) have been applied to calculate the gastric emptying time and gastric emptying rate in fishes. The merits of different models vary from case to case as well as species to species. Moreover, optimal digestion and feed utilization in fishes depends on various factors including food or prey types, food quality and sizes. Like the higher vertebrates’ nutrient digestibility of fishes has gained attention and has been measured in different ways. Inert marker has mostly been used by the researchers to calculate apparent digestibility (absorption) coefficients (ADCs) by monitoring relative changes in inert marker and nutrient concentration in faeces relative to the diet fed. Although research on gastric emptying and digestion are available for most of the aquaculture species, research on gastric emptying and digestion for archer fishes is scare in the literature. Therefore, in this chapter a detailed digestion process of T. jaculatrix has been discussed.
