Co-feeding schemes affect survival, growth, and development in the larviculture of the Striped cleaner shrimp Lysmata amboinensis (de Mann, 1888)

ABSTRACT

Improving larval nutrition is a key aspect to enhancing larval survival and shortening the larval cycle of the cleaner shrimp Lysmata amboinensis, the most traded shrimp species in the marine ornamental industry. A 30-day feeding trial was conducted in order to investigate the effect of the different feeding schemes: AT- Enriched Artemia meta-nauplii + Thalassiosira pseudonana; RAT- Enriched rotifers + enriched Artemia + T. pseudonana; CAT- Apocyclops panamensis copepodites + Enriched Artemia + T. pseudonana; STR- under starvation, upon growth, survival, and development of L. amboinensis larvae. Larvae in the CAT and STR treatments survived for over 3 days, however, total mortality occurred before day 6 in both treatments, whereas in RAT, larvae had an average survival (± SD) of 68.3 ± 12.5% by the end of the trial and those in AT showed a survival of 30.0 ± 5.0%. Development rate was also higher in RAT, where 44.3 ± 13.8% of the larvae were able to reach the zoea X stage by the end of the experiment. Among the larvae in AT, 88.5 ± 10.3% of them were at the zoea IX stage and a small percentage of the larvae were still at the zoea VIII stage on day 30. Growth in AT (2.02 ± 0.33 mm) was lower than in RAT (3.50 ± 0.26 mm). These results suggest that a diverse diet based on a combination of rotifers, Artemia and the microalgae T. pseudonana promotes a satisfactory performance of early to intermediate L. amboinensis zoea stages.

KEYWORDS:

• Ornamental shrimp
• larval nutrition
• marine ornamentals
• cleaner shrimp
• feeding

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Virginia Sea Grant for financial support. The authors also thank Dr. Stephen Urick, Dr. Abdelnaser Bayoumy and George A. Ween for their valuable laboratory assistance and guidance, and Dr. Clarissa Pellegrini Ferreira for her contributions to improve the quality of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).