Vol. 3 Contributions to the Study of East Pacific Crustaceans 2004 177 Use of the tropical harpacticoid copepod Tisbe monozota Bowman, 1962 (Copepoda: Harpacticoida: Tisbidae) as live food in marine larviculture Ana Carmela Puello-Cruz 1 , Blanca González-Rodríguez 1 , Armando García-Ortega 1 , and S. Gómez 2 1 Centro de Investigación en Alimentación y Desarrollo A.C. (CIAD), Unidad Mazatlán en Acuicultura y Manejo Ambiental, Ap. postal 711 C.P. 82010 Mazatlán, Sinaloa, México. puello@victoria.ciad.mx 2 Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnología, Unidad Académica Mazatlán, UNA, Ap. Postal 811, C.P. 82040, Mazatlán, Sinaloa, México ABSTRACT.- Larviculture of many marine species still rely on predictable mass sources of easily digestible live food with high nutritional content. Copepods have been successfully used in larviculture demonstrating their importance as live food due to the natural presence of large amounts of essential fatty acids (EFA) and antioxidant elements that promote better survival and growth rates in fish and shrimp larvae. The genus Tisbe Lilljeborg, 1853 has been successfully tested as live food in several fish larvae of economic importance. In order to develop the culture of Tisbe monozota Bowman, 1962, a review on the advances in the culture of the genus Tisbe was prepared. This information was analyzed in order to design several experiments aiming at the determination of the best diet to produce the highest number of copepods and to evaluate the acceptance of T. monozota as live food for puffer fish (Sphoeroides annulatus Jenyns, 1842) and white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei (Boone,1931)) larvae. Results demonstrated T. monozota to possess higher nutritional contents compared with other organisms commonly used as live food (e.g., Artemia spp., rotifers and microalgae), demonstrating their potential use in aquaculture. Keywords: Copepoda, Harpacticoida, Tisbidae, Mexico, aquaculture Palabras clave: Copepoda, Harpacticoida, Tisbidae, México, acuicultura Introduction In spite of recent advances in aquaculture of marine fishes and crustaceans, the first larval stages of many commercially important species still rely on the supply of easily digestible live food with high nutrition value. A well-known problem in larviculture is the lack of nutritionally adequate live food sources. Even though some authors make reference to their deficient nutritional content with low essential fatty acids (Léger et al. 1986, Shield et al. 1999, Shield 2001), Artemia (Kellogg 1906), rotifers and microalgae are the most commonly used live food organisms. Other studies carried out on the gut content of wild larvae have shown the importance of including copepods in their diets to improve resistance to stress, skin pigmentation and survival rates during the larval development of some marine fish species (Stottrup et al. 1997). Luizi et al. (1999) demonstrated that fish larvae digest copepods more easily than Artemia. However, massive production of copepods still has to provide and satisfy demands for live food in larviculture of marine species (Chandler 1986, Kraul et al. 1993, Stottrup 2000). The genus Tisbe Lilljeborg, 1853 has been used intensively in experimental cultures, and research studies have concluded that under controlled conditions Tisbe species can be easily maintained (Chandler 1986, Nanto et al. 1998, Kraul et al. 1993, Stottrup et al. 1997) (Appendix 1). Tisbe has similar characteristics to those of the highly valued Artemia: short life cycle, high fecundity, high egg production, high hatching and survival rates, high tolerance to a wide range of temperature and salinity variation, accepts hand- ling and develops well in high density cultures.