Live Foods For The Larval Rearing Of Freshwater Ornamental Fishes

  Feeding management plays a critical role in the success of fish culture. The controlled production of larvae from captive brood stock or the hatchery production of fry has now become a routine operation for most of the ornamental fishes. The main reason for this is that the developing larvae are usually very small, extremely fragile, and generally not physiologically fully developed. The food to be ingested by a larva it first has to be detected and so the degree of development of the functional sense organs such as the optical receptors (eyes), chemoreceptors (olfactory organs, taste buds) and mechanoreceptors (lateral line) is crucial. Moreover, live food organisms usually have a much better contrast than artificial feeds and generally have a triggering effect by their continuous movement, allowing an enhanced perception by the feeding larva. Similarly, the swimming activity of live food organisms generally assures a good distribution of food items in the water column, this in turn facilitating more frequent encounters with the developing larvae which in most cases have a low mobility. However, formulated feeds do not generally meet all these requirements and usually result in poor growth and survival for fish larvae. Nutritional quality of live food in aquaculture is important for survival and growth of larvae (Szyper et al, 1989). Now a days, in fresh water ornamental fish larval rearing commonly used live food organisms are Paramecium, Micro worms , Moina , daphnia, blood worms, baby brine shrimps(Artemia) etc,. The present paper is to describe the various techniques employed for the production of live food organisms.

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