New findings have been obtained by the team from the University of Rostock, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Department of Aquaculture and Sea-Ranching, from experiments on effect of different microalgae diets on Apocyclops panamensis as a live food for fish larval rearing.
In the recent years, more effort has been done to find an appropriate food to rear fish larvae in order to decrease the cost of production in aquaculture and also to increase the fish welfare. One of the main problems is to define what an appropriate food for the first days of the fish larvae feeding is. Artemia sp. and Brachionus sp. are most commonly used species for fish larvae rearing but there is still a lack of knowledge in the nutritional requirements of the fish larvae, which appear to be species specific and not to be fulfilled by these diets. In this context, copepods are gaining more and more attention (Ajiboye et al. 2010).
Apocyclops panamensis seems to be a promising candidate for intensive culture (Phelps et al. 2005). Apocyclops panamensis, a cyclopoid copepod, was provided by Aquacopa GmbH (Jabel, Germany) and cultured at the facilities of Rostock University. Three experiments took place between 2020 and 2021. The experiments consisted in the analysis of the population structure (nauplie, copepodites, males and females), size and density. Several serial algae cultures of each species were used to ensure the feeding at the exponential phase.
More information on the results:
Source: Aquaculture Europe 2020 Abstract book: EFFECT OF DIFFERENT MICROALGAE DIETS ON Apocyclops panamensis(MARSH, 1913) AS A LIVE FOOD FOR FISH LARVAL REARING
Photo credit: University of Rostock