A SIMPLE AND LOW-COST TECHNIQUE FOR CULTURING ROTIFERA WITHOUT MICROALGAE

Abstract

So far, microalgae are the first choice diet for feeding rotifers (Maruyama et al., 1997), thanks to their excellent influence on rotifer growth rate (Hagiwara et al., 1997; Dhert et al., 2001; Yoshimatsu and Hossain, 2014), rotifer nutrition (Watanabe, 1983; Brown, 2002) and for the nutrition of fish larvae that feeds on the rotifers (Reitan et al., 1997). However, culturing microalgae require high investment and running expenses (Borowitzka, 1997), with difficulties in production (Lee, 2001), harvesting (Baros et al., 2015), and storage/preservation (Camacho-Rodrigues et al., 2015). For this reason, baker’s yeast and other products such as condensed algae and Selco (Inve.Co.Ltd) were introduced. The former is cheap but cultures are unstable while the latter is costly. The present study investigated the use of microalgal replacement diet (MRD) based on fishwastes as a simple