Until recently, it was considered impossible to feed newly hatched marine fish species with a compound diet. Substituting a compound diet for live prey was performed several weeks after hatching, depending on the species. Compound diets were well ingested at the early stage but larvae died with a gut full of food, suggesting that larvae were unable to digest the compound diet. The hypothesis was that younger larvae have insufficient digestive enzymes to thrive on compound diets, and that exogenous enzymes, provided from live prey, are necessary for early stages.The organogenesis of marine fish larvae is not completely achieved at hatching and histological studies have revealed that the anatomy of the digestive tract undergoes developmental changes over... |