A 562day feeding trial was conducted to evaluate the potential of replacing white fish meal (WFM) with fermented soybean meal ( FSBM ) and soybean meal ( SBM ) in experimental diets for juvenile grouper Epinephelus coioides of initial weight 9. 4 ?0. 1g. Six The control diet (diet 5) contained 68 % of WFM as a sole (1. 5m ?1misonitrogenous diets were formulated to contain 52 % proteinand 12 %lipid. WFMwasreplacedbyFSBMatfourinclusionlevelsof 28 %, 21 %, 14 %and 7%(diets 124) . SBM was tested at one level of 20 % (diet 6) . protein source. Grouper juveniles were cultured in the floating net2cages ?1. 5m) and fed to satiation once daily. Weight growth (WG) and special growth ratio (SGR) were maximized when fish were fed with a combination of diet containing 14 % FSBM and the control diet , respectively. Feeding efficiency (FE) and protein efficiency ratio (PER) decreased with increasing inclusion of FSBM. whole body composition, HSI and VSI. 7 % FSBM and 63 % WFM but they were not significantly different from fish fed with the FSBM and SBM substitutes had no significant effect on At the same inclusion level , fish fed the diets containing 21 % FSBM had higher growth , FE and PER than fish fed the 20 % SBM diets , indicating that FSBM was a kind of better protein source for fish growth than SBM. Based on broken2line regression analysis of WG ( WG versus replacementlevelof WFMwithFSBM),10 %of WFMcanbereplacedbyFSBMwithnoeffectongrowth, FE, PER and body composition of Epinephelus coioides.