Intensive rearing system for fish larvae research II: Artemia hatching and enriching system

Abstract Live food such as Artemia is considered to be an essential part of any marine finfish hatchery. Standard methods were developed for hatching and enhancing the nutritional value of the Artemia nauplii by using different enrichment products. Although there is a variety of commercially available products in the market, further research on more specific enrichments for solving specific nutritional deficiencies in fish larvae is still required. A simple, compact and reliable experimental system was developed for these nutritional experiments. The system was built as a compact, all-in-one system with eight 50-l conical tanks in a water bath. The system reduces variation between the replicates (tanks), otherwise resulting from individual heaters and aeration. It reduces the manpower and time needed for harvesting and to re-establish the system on a daily basis by the ability to harvest, wash and refill all the tanks at the same time with the same volume of water. The system has been used for a variety of experiments, comparing commercial and experimental enrichments, bacterial monitoring and evaluation of different Artemia procedures.