The culture of emerging marine finfish species is expected to play a major role in the continued expansion of the aquaculture industry. Despite considerable advancements in aquaculture technologies, significant growth of this sector has yet to occur. A major reason for this has been the limited availability of juveniles from hatcheries. Rearing of marine finfish larvae has proven to be one of the biggest barriers to successful hatchery operations, largely due to the difficulties associated with providing adequate nutrition at the earliest stages of development. Live feeds have proven to be the only reliable feed source for newly hatched marine larvae, but using them introduces considerable challenges and inefficiencies that can impact the success of a hatchery. The purpose of this project is to develop complete hatchery diets that can effectively eliminate the required use of live feeds, enhance hatchery production and ultimately support successful growth of this industry sector. SUMMARY OF
Anticipated Results: A successful Phase I project will yield a set of novel hatchery microdiets from innovative process engineering techniques established during Phase I R&D. These diets which will be designed for specific emerging marine finfish species will represent a range of physical and nutritional qualities which investigative research from this project will have established as necessary for the complete replacement of live feeds. This will position ZBI to begin a second phase of research work to assess the efficacy of the various diets in actual hatchery settings, assuming receipt of a Phase II SBIR award
