Culture of fish food organisms

Unit 4 - Copepods

4.4.Candidate species and culture techniques
The main suborders of copepods found in brackishwater are calanoids (Acartia, Calanus and Pseudocalanus spp.), harpacticoids and cyclopoids. Herbivorous copepods are primarily filter feeders and typically feed on very small particles. But they can feed on larger particles, which gives them an advantage over the rotifers. Copepods can also eat detritus.

Calanoida is an important order of copepods, a kind of zooplankton. They include 43 families with about 2000 species of both marine and freshwater copepods . Calanoid copepods are important in many food webs, taking in energy from phytoplankton and algae and 'repackaging' it for consumption by higher trophic level predators like birds, fishes and mammals. Many commercial fishes are dependent on calanoid copepods for diet in either their larval or adult forms. Baleen whales such as the bowhead whale eat copepods of the genera Calanus and Neocalanus.