were al l ocat ed to 45 t anks (5 treatments × 3 col or
morphs × 3 repl i cat es × 10 i ndi vi dual s per t ank). Seawater used
was stored in a big pool and heated by boiler, and then adjusted to
14 °C by mi xi ng heated water wi th nat ural seawatereach tank, respectively, T is the duration of the experiment (60 days)
(Bai et al., 2015; Xia et al., 2012).
Six sea cucumbers from each replicate tank were pooled to produce