| Abstract: | As an ecologically sustainable aquaculture mode, the rice‐fish approach has been paid more attention in recent years. In rice paddies, there are plant and animal diet items available to fish, but it is not clear how common carp adapt to different diets. In view of this, common carp (initial weight 492.6 ± 30 g, n = 270) were randomly divided into three groups and fed with earthworms (group A), earthworms + duckweed (group M) and duckweed (group P) respectively. After 8 weeks under these feeding regimes, the intestinal digestive enzymes activities were assayed, and intestinal tissue sections stained with HE and AB‐PAS were used to observe the morphology. The results showed that the activities of trypsin and lipase were highest in group A, followed by group M and group P. Group A had greater intestinal fold height, fold width and fold absorption area than the other groups (p < .05), especially in the foregut. Meanwhile, the total number of mucous cells was largest in group P, followed by the groups M and A. Totally, activities and distributions of digestive enzymes, fold height, fold width, fold absorption area and number and distribution of mucous cells of common carp were affected by the type of diet. Based on these results, it was found that common carp has strong adaptability to diets, and it was speculated that the majority of digestion and absorption of protein was concentrated in the foregut, while for starch and cellulose, it was spread out along the whole intestine. |
