Planktonic Crustacean Culture—Live Planktonic Crustaceans as Live Feed for Finfish and Shrimps in Aquaculture

The cultivation of planktonic crustaceans as live feed is of paramount importance for the aquaculture and aquarium industries. The use of live cladocerans as feed for freshwater fish is limited to the aquarium industry, whereas Artemia and copepods are used to feed edible marine fish larvae with small mouth gape. Live feed production is expensive and time consuming; therefore, it is only used for fish that cannot be fed an inert diet directly, and only until they are ready for weaning to an inert diet. High-quality planktonic crustacean cultures are furthermore used to conduct environmental risk assessments for hazardous chemicals. Cladocerans are widely used for ecotoxicology testing, but Artemia and copepods are emerging as new model species. The present chapter reviews the culturing procedures of these important planktonic crustaceans: Artemia, cladocerans, and copepods. It discusses their use as live feed and as test organisms for environmental risk assessments. The culturing procedures are categorized into three complexity levels: Extensive, semi-extensive, and intensive. In general, the pros for Artemia and cladocerans are that they are easier to culture than copepods. Copepods are often more difficult in term of culture requirements and feeding. Nevertheless, copepods have the advantage of being in either freshwater or saline water, whereas cladocerans are limited to freshwater and Artemia to seawater. Artemia cysts and copepod eggs have a well-defined protocol for storage and distribution to aquaculture end users. Cladocerans, however, have the potential for the ephippia stage, although this is not well developed. For toxicological testing, three species are used: Artemia franciscana, Daphnia magna, and Acartia tonsa, with Artemia and A. tonsa in seawater testing, D. magna in freshwater testing. The chapter concludes with a comparative analysis of these organisms from use and culturing capability and demonstrates that there are strong similarities and challenges across these taxa.