Observations on feeding and biochemical characteristics to improve larviculture of Robsonella fontaniana (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae)

At present, the production of merobenthic octopuses with a post-eclosion planktonic phase is a great challenge for global aquaculture. So far, juveniles from only four species have been reported to have been obtained under controlled rearing conditions: Octopus vulgaris, Octopus joubini, Enteroctopus dofleini and Robsonella fontaniana, the only Chilean species. Robsonella fontaniana (Orbigny, 1834) is a small-sized octopus traded in international markets as “baby octopus”. It is distributed over nearly the entire southern coast of South America, both in the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. This study shows new results regarding the biochemical characteristics in embryonic and paralarval stages, as well as the characteristics of food consumption during the paralarval stage that allow us to discuss a baseline on which to define a strategy for the larviculture of this species.