To implement an ecosystem-approach to inform aquaculture production and management strategies, understanding the relationship between aquafeeds and aquaculture species is essential to maximise animal growth performance, quantify the flow of nutrient elements and minimise waste output. A new bridging framework, geometric stoichiometry (GS) unifies the disciplines geometric framework for nutrition (GFN) and ecological stoichiometry (ES) which share the central concept of nutrient homeostasis by extending the equations of ES to include GFN core concepts. It uses macromolecules as currencies and dietary regulation to balance nutrient deficits and excesses by the animal. In this study, we explore the feasibility of using GS approach to investigate how different formulated feed ingredients affect animal nutrient intake to maintain C:N homeostasis, growth and waste output using three opportunistically available test cases for slipper lobster (T.australiensis), a new species of interest for commercial aquaculture. Model outputs indicate that different crude protein sources and dietary inclusion contribute to the most variation in nutrient intake and growth performance.
GS model predicts highest nitrogenous waste output for soybean meal which has the lowest crude protein content whereas krill meal had the lowest waste output despite having the highest crude protein content, which can be attributed to the differences in absorption efficiencies. This highlights the need for targeted nutrition experiments to obtain feed and species-specific parameters to refine the slipper lobster GS model. The model will facilitate better understanding of rock lobsters’ growth performance in response to feed supplied, maximise growth performance, minimise waste output and inform EAA approaches to commercial establishment of rock lobster aquaculture.