Nutrition of Marine Fish Larvae

ABSTRACT

In the hatchery production of aquatic animals for aquaculture, livefoods such as diatoms; rotifer, Brachionus plicatilis and brine shrimp, Artemia salina, have been used throughout the world. However, such production requires large facilities, maintenance expenses, and labor to produce a desired amount of live foods constantly and reliably. Also, the nutritive value of planktonic organisms is occasionally variable, indicating that the dietary quality of these live foods varies with the content of n-3 highly unsaturated fatty acid (n-3 HUFA). Therefore it is necessary to develop microparticulate diets as a substitute for live foods to further increase theproductivity of seed for fish culture. The nutritional components of microparticulate diets for fish larvae should be determined on the basis of requirements of the larval fish for proteins and amino acids, lipids and fatty acids, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. Moreover, the efficient development of microparticulate diets for the fish larvae has promoted the improvement of nutritional requirement studies. The present reviewconcerning the nutrition of marine fish larvae focuses on the proteins, amino acids, peptides, fatty acids, phospholipids, depigmentation of flatfish, stress tolerance of lipids, incorporation of HUFA in neural tissues, HUFA in egg and larvae, HUFA enrichment of live food, carbohydrates, vitamins, energy source during embryo and larval stages, enzyme supplement in microparticulate diets, and application of microparticulate diets inaquaculture.

Key Words:

• Nutrition
• marine fish larvae
• microparticulate diet
• highly unsaturated fatty acid
• phospholipid