Culture of fish food organisms

Unit 2 - Rotifers

2.3.3.3.Mass production on algae
Undoubtedly, marine microalgae are the best diet for rotifers and very high yields can be obtained if sufficient algae are available and an appropriate management is followed. Unfortunately in most places it is not possible to cope with the fast filtration capacity of the rotifers which require continuous algal blooms. If the infrastructure and labor is not limiting, a procedure of continuous (daily) harvest and transfer to algal tanks can be considered. In most places, however, pure algae are only given for starting up rotifer cultures or to enrich rotifers.

Batch cultivation is probably the most common method of rotifer production in marine fish hatcheries. The culture strategy consists of either the maintenance of a constant culture volume with an increasing rotifer density or the maintenance of a constant rotifer density by increasing the culture volume . Extensive culture techniques (using large tanks of more than 50 m3) as well as intensive methods (using tanks with a volume of 200-2000 l) are applied. In both cases large amounts of cultured microalgae, usually the marine alga Nannochloropsis, are usually inoculated in the tanks together with a starter population containing 50 to 150 rotifers.ml-1.