The objective of the present study was accordingly to examine if
cod larvae could incorporate DHA from dietary PL more efficiently
than from dietary TAG in the early stages of feeding and growth.
This might explain why copepods are generally a better live feed
source than rotifers and Artemia for some cold water fish larvae, because
copepods, contrary to rotifers and Artemia, have highDHAcontents
in their PL (Li et al., 2014).We compared DHA retention in PL of
17 day post-hatching (dph) cod larvae fed two rotifer-based diets
and one copepod-based diet, all with a different percentage of DHA
in PL. For Experiment 1, we designed amethod to produce two rotifer
diets that were almost equally composed except for a difference in
percentage content of DHA in PL and we compared these diets in a
first feeding trial. In Experiment 2, we compared one of the rotifer
diets with cultured nauplii of Acartia tonsa exhibiting not only a
higher percentage of DHA in their PL than the rotifers, but also
other differences in their lipid composition.