The definition of adequate feeding strategies in fish culture is proportionally more crucial during the early life stages, when suboptimal feeding can impact not only on growth but also on survival. The larvae of most fish species have a narrow resource spectrum and they generally require live feed which are expensive, manpower demanding or complicated to produce. On the other hand, live feed possess one major advantage in that they remain alive and accessible for a longer time (especially for species that do not feed on the bottom), in contrast to inert food particles. Hence, when a live prey has been found adequate for a particular life stage, the feeding strategy essentially consists of determining how much food should be delivered to fulfil the requirements of the larvae. This can be deduced from the relationships between fish size and food intake for meal size, and between fish size and gut transit rate for meal frequency. Such theoretical calculations rely on the assumption that fish are capable of finding and eating all food particles that are offered. This
might be a false premise in fish, because the sensorial equipments and
food searching behaviours are generally less elaborate in larvae than