Nutritional requirements of juveniles pacu (Piaractus mesopotamicus Holmberg, 1887): protein, energy and amino acids Pacu, Piaractus mesopotamicus, a neotropical, omnivorous native characin, widely used in Brazilian aquaculture. However, some aspects of your nutrition are controversial or ignored. This work aimed at determining dietary protein, energy and amino acids requirements of juvenile pacu through the evaluation of performance, body composition and hematological parameters. In a first trial, pacu juveniles (15.5±0.4 g) were fed twice a day for 10 weeks until apparent saciety with diets containing crude protein (CP) from 22 to 38 % (intervals of 4%) and digestible energy levels among 2600 and 3400 kcal kg-1 (intervals of 200 kcal), in a totally randomized experimental design, 5 × 5 factorial scheme (n=3). Weight gain (WG) and specific growth rate (SGR) increased significantly with amount dietary CP. Nitrogen retention (NR) and protein efficiency ratio (PER) decreased (p<0.05) with increasing dietary protein at all tested levels of dietary energy. DE levels affected (p<0.05) whole body moisture, protein, fat, ash, gross energy and condition factor. Economic efficiency ratio was influenced by dietary protein (p<0.05) and digestible energy (p<0.05), and by interaction between the two factors. However, income was affected by dietary protein level (p<0.05) alone. Significant effect of treatments in hematological parameters were registered for mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration, total plasma protein and plasma glucose. Crude protein requirements and optimum protein:energy ratio for weight gain of juveniles of pacu were 271 g kg-1 and 92.9 mg kcal-1 , respectively. All dietary crude protein and digestible energy levels studied did not pose harms to fish health. Dietary lysine requirement of juvenile pacu Piaractus mesopotamicus (4.3 g) was determined by feeding five isonitrogenous (32% crude protein) amino acid test diets containing casein, gelatin and Lcrystalline amino acids with graded levels of lysine (0.90, 1.17, 1.44, 1.69 and 1.96% of dry diet) for 74 days, three times a day until apparent satiation, to groups (n=4) of 18 fish in a totally randomized design trial. No mortality or nutritional deficiency signs were observed; reduced growth was recorded for fish fed diets with either the lower or the higher lysine contents. Final weight (FW), WG, SGR, feed efficiency (FE), PER, NR, proximate whole body composition, morphometry and hematology were affected (p<0.05) by dietary lysine concentrations. Seconddegree polynomial regression analysis of WG and PER data indicated dietary lysine requirement of 1.45, 1,51 and 1.43% of dry diet, respectively to WG, FE and PPV. Significantly higher lipid and protein contents values were obtained for whole body of fish fed the diets with 0.9 and 1.96% of lysine. Lysine requirement of juvenile pacu was determined as being 1.5% of dry diet.