ENRICHED EGYPTIAN ARTEMIA AS AN EFFECTIVE LIVE FEED FOR THE BIOCHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF MARINE PRAWN PENAEUS JAPONICAS

Abstract

The present work was undertaken in an attempt to evaluate the effect of enriched live Artemia strains on the biochemical composition of the common prawn Peneaus in Egypt. Cysts of Artemia strains were collected during spring 2014 from El-Max and Borg El-Arab regions. Cysts were hatched under optimum conditions then treated with bran, yeast and algae. Enriched cysts were dried and used for feeding post larvae (11 days) of Penaeus japonicas for sex weeks. The obtained results revealed that there is no notable differences in the biochemical composition of the prawn that fed on enriched Egyptian strains compared with that fed on Artemia fransicana (control). However, analysis of data showed that Artemia strains collected from Borg El-Arab and enriched with yeast (G1) is the best kind of feeding to obtain excellent biochemical composition of Penaeus japonicas. In addition, 16 amino acids were detected in prawn and analysis of data appears that arginine represented the maximum value. This value was also detected in G1 which confirm the previous conclusion. Therefore, it is recommended that cheap Artemia strain collected from Borg El- Arab enriched with yeast can be used as a live feed for rearing prawn instead of the expensive imported Artemia franciscans.