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Abstract:

Burbot is a possible candidate to diversify freshwater aquaculture and its potential is being investigated in different countries. But the low weaning effectiveness and the long Artemia period during larviculture are a bottle-neck for establishing a stable commercial burbot culture. From an economic point of view it is very important to wean larvae at the earliest possible stage of culture because the cost of feeding with live food is very high (Baskerville-Bridges et al. 2000). A previous study at Aqua-ERF (Meeus et al 2011) already indicated that weaning of burbot larvae can be done by direct feeding with artificial larval feeds. This eliminates the extra labour and cost to produce Artemia during a co-fed weaning strategy. The Artemia cost would even be lower if early weaning could be achieved without compromising survival, but a study of Palinska-Zarska et al. (2013) indicates that the optimal digestive tract, allowing digestion of artificial feed, is bound to a certain larval size. The aim of this study is to find by histological analyses the larval size on which the digestive tract of burbot larvae is mature enough for direct weaning on artificial feed.