Copepods as Live Feed

Copepods are small crustaceans (Acartia, Parvocalanus, Apocyclops, Tisbe species) used as live feed where rotifers and Artemia prove nutritionally inadequate. Their decisive advantage is composition: copepods naturally contain 20-40 percent DHA of total fatty acids, free amino acid profiles closer to fish prey, and are rich in phospholipid-bound nutrients that rotifers lack even after enrichment. This is why larvae of Atlantic halibut, Atlantic cod, groupers, and many wrasse species show dramatically higher survival and lower malformation rates on copepod diets than on conventional rotifer-Artemia protocols. Production is harder: copepods are slower to culture (generation times of days rather than hours), require cleaner water and careful prey density management, and are usually produced either in extensive pond systems, in batch cultures with algae, or in continuous systems with automated egg harvesting (copepod eggs survive collection, cold storage, and hatching on demand, which decouples production from feeding schedules). Capital and labor costs are several times those of rotifer lines, so copepods are reserved for high-value species or as a supplement during the critical first 10 days of feeding.