Use of Artemia supplemented with exogenous digestive enzymes as sole live food increased survival and growth during the larviculture of the longsnout seahorse Hippocampus reidi

Abstract

This study evaluated the effect of exogenous digestive enzymes on the survival, growth performance and morphology of the digestive tract of juveniles of the longsnout seahorse Hippocampus reidi fed exclusively with Artemia and supplemented with five different concentrations of porcine pancreatin (PP) (0, 5, 25, 50 and 75 mg/L from birth until 30 days after release). The results found in the present study clearly show that there was a significant increase in survival and growth as well as substantial changes in the morphology of intestinal villi in seahorses fed exclusively with Artemia supplemented with 75 mg/L PP. Therefore, the use of digestive enzyme supplementation constitutes an important advance for the establishment of a more efficient and practical feeding protocol (exclusive use of Artemia) for juveniles of the longsnout seahorse.

Carry-over effects of pre-breeding diets on seahorse (Hippocampus reidi) reproductive success

“…The high survivals achieved in 7 DAR juveniles released by breeders fed on non-enriched Artemia (group M0) were similar or higher than previously reported in breeders fed on a high quality diet (Olivotto et al, 2008;Hora et al, 2017;Randazzo et al, 2018;de Souza et al, 2020).…”

Effects of food type, temperature and salinity on the growth performance and antioxidant status of the longsnout seahorse,Hippocampus reidi

“…nauplii followed by a combination of Artemia nauplii and Tisbe spp copepodites/copepods had the best survival, and weight and height growth. However, using solely Artemia without exogenous digestive enzymes and HUFAs supplement to feed H. reidi larvae showed poor results (Novelli et al., 2016; Randazzo et al, 2018; Souza et al., 2020). As seahorse larvae, Artemia is also considered to be lower nutritional value, especially in fatty acid, and presenting lower digestibility for juvenile at the age around 15–30 days old (Pham & Lin, 2013; Randazzo et al., 2018; Souza et al., 2020; Willadino et al., 2012).…”

“…However, using solely Artemia without exogenous digestive enzymes and HUFAs supplement to feed H. reidi larvae showed poor results (Novelli et al., 2016; Randazzo et al, 2018; Souza et al., 2020). As seahorse larvae, Artemia is also considered to be lower nutritional value, especially in fatty acid, and presenting lower digestibility for juvenile at the age around 15–30 days old (Pham & Lin, 2013; Randazzo et al., 2018; Souza et al., 2020; Willadino et al., 2012). In this study, the widely used foods, frozen mysid shrimp (Hora & Joyeux, 2009) and frozen adult Artemia were fed, individually or combination, to H. reidi (2.5 months old), and results showed that superior growth performance and feed efficiency were recorded in seahorses fed frozen mysid shrimp (MD) for 56 days compared to that of seahorses fed frozen adult Artemia (AD) and the mixture (MAD).…”

“…However, it does not meet the nutritional requirement of marine fish larvae, including seahorse, and having low digestibility (Souza et al., 2020). Therefore, Artemia supplemented with exogenous digestive enzymes (Souza et al., 2020) or enriched with highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFAs) (Novelli et al., 2016) before feeding or copepods (Randazzo et al, 2018) are considered to be more suitable for the growth performance and survival of seahorse. For the seahorse juvenile aquaculture, living or frozen mysid shrimp, and enriched Artemia are common to be used.…”