Fish larval nutrition and feed formulation - knowledge gaps and bottlenecks for advances in larval rearing

Despite considerable progress in recent years, many questions regarding fish larval nutrition remain largely unanswered, and several research avenues remain open. A holistic understanding of the supply line of nutrients is important for developing diets for use in larval culture and for the adaptation of rearing conditions that meet the larval requirements for the optimal presentation of food organisms and/or microdiets. The aim of the present review is to revise the state of the art and to pinpoint the gaps in knowledge regarding larval nutritional requirements, the nutritional value of live feeds and challenges and opportunities in the development of formulated larval diets. © 2013 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.
This study benefited from participation in LARVANET – COST action FA0801 (EU RTD framework programme. K. Hamre received funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Fisheries and the Research Council of Norway (CODE-199482). M. Yúfera received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation MICINN + FEDER/ERDF (projects AGL2007-64450-C02-01 and Consolider Ingenio 2010 Program-project Aquagenomics CSD2007-0002). L. Conceição participated in this review in the framework of project HYDRAA – PTDC/MAR/71685/2006, granted by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal, with the support of FEDER. I. Rønnestad received funding from the Research Council of Norway (CODE- 199482 and GutFeeling- 190019) and the EC FP7 (LIFECYCLE- 222719).