World Aquaculture Singapore 2022

November 29 - December 2, 2022

Singapore

CAPTURE FEED EFFICIENCY OF CAPTIVITY CORAL: UPTAKE OF Artemia-BASED FEEDS AND COMMERCIAL PELLETS BY Zoanthus CORALS

Tan. R. J* and Chang. O

 

Diploma in Veterinary Technology, School of Applied Science, Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore 529757

1700172H@tp.edu.sg

 



Rising sea temperatures are contributing factors of mass bleaching events in coral reefs. One such coral presents is reefs would be the Zoanthus corals. Such bleaching events can be prevented by increasing the stress resilience of corals and one such method is through feeding a enriched diet. Corals have been studied to be autotrophic from the symbiotic algae that grows on their polyps. However, the corals are still capable of heterotrophic behaviour by capturing prey such as artemia within water columns in the sea. Hence, in this study, the heterotrophic characteristics of Zooanthus were studied for further application on administering beneficial supplements in their diet to prevent bleaching. The Zooanthus coral undergone 3 feeding trials; Commercial pelleted feed (1), Artemia Salina (2) and Artemia Salina enriched with probiotics (3) for a total of 12 days, with each trial being fed for 4 days. The method used here was targeted feeding where the feed was pipetted directly above the polyps of the corals. The corals with closed heads after 3 min after the feed was released is recorded as receptive whereas if it is open, it is recorded as not receptiveness. The feed that was most receptive to the corals were the pelleted feed with an average of 89.15% whereas the receptiveness of artemia salina and artemia salina enriched with probiotics were averaged at 10.51% and 9.64% respectively. Overall, the feed that had a significantly higher receptiveness was the pelleted commercial feed.