Hatchability of Selected Commercial Artemia Strains Using Waters from Selected Saline Crater Lakes of Western Uganda

The research was funded by National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) of Uganda. Abstract Hatchability of Artemia strains; Artemia franciscana from Great Salt Lake (GSL), A. franciscana from salt ponds in Vin Chao (VC), Chinese strain (Chinese), TUZ Parthenogetic Artemia from Kazakhstan (TUZ) and Parthenogenetic Artemia strain from Siberia (PAS) was examined using waters from lakes Katwe, Mururmuri, Bunyampaka, Bagusa and Maseche. The study purpose was to identify the best performing Artemia strain as well as the best suited saline crater lakes in Western Uganda for Artemia production based on hatchability. Artemia cysts were hatched under conditions described by Van Stappen (1996) in fabricated Artemia hatching cones at a salinity of 40ppm, temperature of 27±2°C, and light of 2000lux. Hatchability was monitored after 24hour and 48hour of incubation. Artemia franciscana (VC) had significantly higher hatching percentage than all tested strains (P-value <0.05). Lakes Katwe, Bunyampaka and Maseche waters presented the highest hatching percentages therefore are best suited for Artemia production. Keywords : Artemia , Hatching percentage, saline crater lakes DOI : 10.7176/JNSR/9-18-05 Publication date :September 30 th 2019