Gilthead seabream Sparus aurata is an altricial species, that is, in larval stages, the onset of exogenous feeding happens before the complete digestive system maturation and the beginning of gastric digestion. Newly hatched larvae are too small and require even smaller feed particles. Since the 1970s, the use of live feeds like rotifers and Artemia nauplii/metanauplii was a critical breakthrough for altricial species successful larviculture and is still applied in commercial hatcheries in first-feeding larvae (Dhont et al., 2013). As the anatomical and functional development of the digestive system is achieved, live feed is gradually replaced by inert diets until weaning (Cahu & Zambonino-Infante, 2001;Rosenlund et al., 1997).The use of dry instead of live feeds for altricial species larviculture has long been an ambitious expectation for reasons of stability in nutritional value, price and supply. Despite the technological advances in larval feed manufacture (i.e., small-sized particles meeting