Nutritional Enhancement in Marine Larviculture Systems
Summary
Marine larviculture faces high early mortality largely due to nutritional gaps in conventional live feeds. Rotifers, Artemia and copepods often lack essential long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, vitamins and trace elements required for proper larval development. Nutritional enhancement strategies—bioencapsulation of micronutrients, probiotic fortification and microbial consortia via biofloc technology—have been devised to address these deficits. Enriching live feeds with selenium, iodine and key fatty acids supports digestive organ maturation, antioxidant defences and immune competence. Innovative approaches harness waste-derived bacteria and photosynthetic microbes to create cost-effective, sustainable feed systems while actively modulating live-feed microbiota to suppress pathogens. By integrating these techniques, hatcheries have achieved notable improvements in larval growth, survival and disease resistance, paving the way for more resilient and resource-efficient practices worldwide.
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Nutritional Enhancement in Marine Larviculture Systems publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in nutritional enhancement in marine larviculture systems across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Bioencapsulation: The process of incorporating essential nutrients into live-feed organisms to improve their dietary composition.
Biofloc technology: A culture method that promotes microbial floc formation to recycle waste nutrients, enhance water quality and offer supplemental feed.
Probiotics: Beneficial microorganisms added to live feeds to stabilise cultures, suppress pathogens and support host health.
Selenoproteins: Selenium-containing proteins that play key roles in antioxidant defence and redox homeostasis.
References
- Enhancement of Live Food Nutritional Status with Essential Nutrients for Improving Aquatic Animal Health: A Review. Animals (2020).
- Culturing live foods for fish larviculture using non‐microalgal diet: The role of waste‐generated bacteria and selected commercial probiotics—A review. Aquaculture Fish and Fisheries (2022).
- Effects of Different Carbon Sources on the Growth and Production of Rotifer (Brachionus plicatilis) in a Zero‐Water Exchange Biofloc Culture System. Aquaculture Research (2024).
- Molecular Antioxidant Functions are Enhanced in Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus Thynnus, L.) Larvae Fed Selenium-Enriched Rotifers Brachionus Rotundiformis. Antioxidants (2022).
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