With increased production, Litopenaeus vannamei has a number of obstacles, with a greater emphasis on larval and postlarval rearing. There are, however, very few studies attempting to understand the post-larval nursery phase of L.vannamei, despite the fact that these stages undergo a complex growth metamorphosis during development as a common feature of penaeids. The purpose of this study is to comprehend the impact of Artemia as a co-feed during the post-larval nursery phase when using either a premium nutrient-dense, Makay Marine MP feed or a budget friendly nutrient-low, Shrimp feed dietary options.
While Artemia is acknowledged as one of the best live foods during the larval and post-larval stages of L. vannamei, it is still unclear how it affects growth and health parameters during the post-larval to nursery phases. This research trial assesses three different Artemia inclusion levels, along with a premium high dense and budget friendly low-dense diet, in L. vannamei reared from post-larvae 12 to 25. A completely randomized design was implemented with six treatments and eight tanks per treatment. Each tank was initially stocked with 200 post-larvae. A combination of two particle feeds and three Artemia co-feeding levels (Table 1) were administered throughout the trial. All the dietary treatments were supplemented with one ppm of commercial probiotics at 500 billion CFU/g before the trial started to evaluate the effect of bacterial colonization in the gut of post-larvae at the trial conclusion through the gut microbiome. At trial conclusion, survival (%), mean body weight (g) and proximate, amino, and fatty acids in the shrimp whole body were evaluated. In addition, the gut microbiome was assessed. Relative sequence abundance of lactobacillus associated with the MP group and economy groups were analyzed.
Dietary intervention had no discernible impact on the mean body length proximate amino acid and fatty acid composition of post-larvae. Nevertheless, the shrimp tanks fed Artemia showed a higher average weight gain and survival as compared to tanks without Artemia co-feeding. A premium diet improved overall growth and survival as compared to a budget friendly diet, albeit not significantly for every treatment. The Makay Marine MP diet appeared to function as a prebiotic substrate by improving lactobacillus colonization in the gut of L. vannamei at PL25 with just a minimal single probiotic dosage (1ppm), which may have contributed to the improved growth and health indices obtained with the premium diet.
In general, the use of a premium diet in combination with co-feeding of 3kg of Artemia per million PL produced resulted in optimal survival and growth of the PL. To obtains similar results for weight gain with a budget friendly diet, inclusion rates of Artemia needed to be increased to a co-feeding level of 6 kg per million PL produced.