Nutritional Components, Biochemical Characteristics, Enzyme Activities, and Growth Differences of Five Freshwater Fish Species?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer #1,

We sincerely thank you and all reviewers for the valuable feedback. This is a revised version of fishes-1964265 entitled ‘Analysis of nutritional components, biochemical characteristics, enzyme activities, and growth differences of five freshwater fish species’. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the manuscript.

The comments mentioned by the reviewer were answered point by point as follows:

Point 1: Title: seems rudimentary can it be changed as to finish with question marks.

Response 1: Thanks for reviewer’s comment. We agree with reviewer’s suggestion. The title “Nutritional components, biochemical characteristics, enzyme activities, and growth differences of five freshwater fish species?” has been changed to end with a question mark and added in line 2-4.

Point 2: Abstract: it needs through revision; Line 12-13 is totally confusing, it has to be rewritten; No mention about the experimental design.

Response 2: Thanks for reviewer’s comment. We agree with reviewer’s suggestion.

• “Common carp (Cyprinus carpio) is an economically important fish worldwide, so many of its species are used for breeding for consumption.” was revised as “Common carp (Cyprinus carpio) is an economically important fish worldwide, with many of its species bred for consumption” and added in line 12-13.
• Thanks for reviewer’s comment. We agree with reviewer’s suggestion. “In this study, after 15 months of feeding in the same environment,” was added in line 15.

Point 3: Introduction: replace old refences with new references wherever possible if not standard.

Response 3: Thanks for reviewer’s comment. We agree with reviewer’s suggestion. All the nonstandard old references in this manuscript have been changed to the new standard references, and replaced in line 46-47, 356-358, 360-362, 386, 394-395, 428-430, 441-442, 445-446.

Point 4: Materials and Methods: Not mentioned about the proximate composition of the feed ingredient and experimental diets.

Response 4: Thanks for reviewer’s comment. We agree with reviewer’s suggestion. “The feed formulation was designed according to ….. shown in Table 1. The common carp were fed two…, according to a 3% weight.” were added in line 97-101.

Point 5: Results: Table number 5, the value of moisture and fat should have reverse trend but it’s totally opposite and that to show significance it’s not justifiable. The authors advised to recheck the values; Antioxidant capacity of five common carp: I don’t thon this is need as author have not designed the diet to see the antioxidant potential of common carp and its not materialistic; Why trypsin and lipase showed reverse trend

Response 5: Thanks for the reviewer’s patient review. We agree with reviewer’s suggestion.

• We carefully reviewed the experimental data and found that the proportions of moisture in SP was 77.49±83, which has been changed in Table 5. In addition, the significance of differences among the five common carp species were also changed in Table 5.
• Thanks for reviewer’s comment. This study only explored the differences of five commom carp species to comprehensive environment under the same natural feeding condition according to antioxidant capacity, so we have not designed the diet to see the antioxidant potential of common carp and its not materialistic. We hope that this study can provide a certain theoretical basis for the subsequent breeding of common carp.
• Thanks for reviewer’s comment. The activities of trypsin and lipase did not show the reverse trend in the five common carp species, but the activities were different, and both enzymes of HLJ were significantly lower than that of the other four common carp species (p<0.05). I don't know if my understanding is correct. If not, I will explain it immediately.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors use a lot of acronyms and abbreviations that are not clearly defined in the text. For example, the acronyms for the 5 carp species are given in the abstract and they should be also in the introduction. In the formulation of the feed you wrote, CMC included at 2.2% DW but without saying what is CMC (Carboxy methyl cellulose???). Regarding the enzyme analysis, you wrote TP, TRS, a-AM, LPS, SOD, and Cat without saying what enzymes you are talking about (Trypsin, amylase, lipase, superoxide dismutase, etc). Please add the whole name of each enzyme before the abbreviation. 

You provide the fatty acid profile of the muscle but in the Material and Methods section you didn't anything about the method used for the analysis, only proximate (and not Approximate, -line 121-) composition, amino acids and enzyme analysis methods are provided. You also use CF (crude fat???) in the discussion section (line 344) and also the CV (Coefficient of variation???) in line339 without explaining what are the abbreviations. 

In general, the manuscript needs an English revision because some sentences are not well written.

However, the results are interesting because they provide a good indication of the metabolism of the different species, the composition in terms of muscle quality (from the consumer's point of view), and the trends of the different species.

Check also the way you have written the published papers in the references.  In all the papers you cited one or 2 authors and then add et al.and you should write all the authors (or only write the first one and add et al., the editor should decide how to arrange it) and some references are wrong. i.e line 542Ronnestad, I. & Yufera, M; line r44 Froese, R (it is only 1 author Rainer Froese), line 554 it si Kolkovski, S. (Sagiv Kolskowski is one author). Please check all the references and change them

Author Response

Dear Reviewer #2,

We sincerely thank you and all reviewers for the valuable feedback. This is a revised version of fishes-1964265 entitled ‘Analysis of nutritional components, biochemical characteristics, enzyme activities, and growth differences of five freshwater fish species’. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the manuscript.

The comments mentioned by the reviewer were answered point by point as follows:

Point 1: The authors use a lot of acronyms and abbreviations that are not clearly defined in the text. For example, the acronyms for the 5 carp species are given in the abstract and they should be also in the introduction. In the formulation of the feed you wrote, CMC included at 2.2% DW but without saying what is CMC (Carboxy methyl cellulose???). Regarding the enzyme analysis, you wrote TP, TRS, a-AM, LPS, SOD, and Cat without saying what enzymes you are talking about (Trypsin, amylase, lipase, superoxide dismutase, etc). Please add the whole name of each enzyme before the abbreviation. 

Response 1: Thanks for reviewer’s comment. We agree with reviewer’s suggestion. 1)The acronyms for the 5 comonon carp species are given in the introduction and have added in line 50-53. 

2)CMC, the abbreviation for Caboxymethyl Cellulose is added to Table 1.

3)The whole names TP, TRS, A-AM, LPS, SOD, and Cat have been added to the Materials and Methods, which are added to line 142-148. In addition, abbreviations appearing in the abstract have been added elsewhere and added in line 154-156.

Point 2: You provide the fatty acid profile of the muscle but in the Material and Methods section you didn't anything about the method used for the analysis, only proximate (and not Approximate, -line 121-) composition, amino acids and enzyme analysis methods are provided. You also use CF (crude fat???) in the discussion section (line 344) and also the CV (Coefficient of variation???) in line339 without explaining what are the abbreviations. 

Response 2: Thanks for reviewer’s comment. We agree with reviewer’s suggestion.

• “Fatty acids were determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS).”was added in line 137-138.
• Thanks for the reviewer’s patient review, CF does not refer to crude fat, CF and CV are abbreviations of condition factor (CF) and coefficient of variation (CV) respectively, which have been shown in 2.6 Data analysisof line 192-193. Therefore, the full name of CV and CF are not written in the discussion.

Point 3:In general, the manuscript needs an English revision because some sentences are not well written.

Response 3: Thanks for reviewer’s comment. We agree with reviewer’s suggestion. This manuscript has been modified by native English speakers working in the field.

Point 4:Check also the way you have written the published papers in the references. In all the papers you cited one or 2 authors and then add et al.and you should write all the authors (or only write the first one and add et al., the editor should decide how to arrange it) and some references are wrong. i.e line 542Ronnestad, I. & Yufera, M; line r44 Froese, R (it is only 1 author Rainer Froese), line 554 it si Kolkovski, S. (Sagiv Kolskowski is one author). Please check all the references and change them

Response 4: Thanks for reviewer’s comment. We agree with reviewer’s suggestion. All the references have been corrected to add all the authors in format in this manuscript.