Experiments were conducted to examine the effects of salinity fluctuation pattern on the intermolt period and growth of Fenneropenaeus chinensis with initial body weight of 1.4510 ± 0.0040 g. The salinity of the control treatment (S0) was 30 ppt throughout the experiment, whereas Treatments S2, S4, S7 and S10 were subjected to different salinity fluctuation pattern with the ranges of ±2, ±4, ±7 and ±10 (ppt), respectively. After the 32-day feeding trial, there were no significant differences in the intermolt periods (P > 0.05); the special growth rates (SGR) under 5 treatments were ranked as S4 > S7 > S2 > S10 > S0, and SGR under treatment S4 was significantly higher than those under treatments S0 and S10 by 58.94% and 37.52%, respectively (P < 0.05). There were no significant differences in feed intake (FI) among all the treatments (P > 0.05). The maximal food conversion efficiency (FCE) occurred in treatment S4, which was significantly higher than those under treatments S0 and S10 by 46.07% and 34.24%, respectively (P < 0.05). Energy budget is also discussed in this article.