International Artemia Aquaculture Consortium

Artemia nauplii are an excellent live food for larviculture of crustaceans and marine fish due to their high digestible protein content, essential fatty acids and small in size. Artemia is mainly marketed as cysts, which allow it to stored for the long term, ready to hatch whenever necessary. Globally, annual Artemia cyst consumption is now around 3,000 MT, harvested mainly from natural salt lakes. In many countries, hatchery workers lack sufficient knowledge and practices in the application of Artemia nauplii during larval rearing are not standardised. This has resulted in increased costs, disease incidence, and reduced survival in larval rearing.

Several countries including Thailand and Vietnam have been successful in commercial production of Artemia biomass in coastal salt farms to improve the livelihoods of thousands of salt farmers. In recent years, Vietnamese aquaculture activities have expanded with new species such as mud crab, mud skipper, and marine snails under cultivation supported by locally produced Artemia cysts and biomass. In Bangladesh, around one hundred shrimp and freshwater prawn hatcheries produce more than 10 billion post larvae per year with an annual consumption of approximately 40 MT of imported Artemia cysts.

This training manual on Artemia hatching and decapsulation provides guidance on optimising the use of Artemia nauplii in larval rearing. In addition, the standardised hatching procedure can be used to inoculate Artemia nauplii for culture in the salt farms of Bangladesh. 

Development of this manual was funded by the European Union. It is published by the Artemia4Bangladesh Project (WorldFish). Redistributed with permission.