A recent study performed by researchers from the Università Politecnica delle Marche in Ancona, Italy and the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute suggests that dietary probiotics may increase the success of captive breeding in marine ornamentals. Researchers supplied the bacterial strain “Lactobacillus rhamnosus IMC 501 to clownfish (A. ocellaris) larvae from the first day posthatch simultaneously by live prey and with addition to rearing water and exclusively by live prey “.

The researchers found that larvae and juveniles fed ‘probiotic gut loaded’ live feeds and were raised in treated water with L. rhamnosus exhibited double the body weight of those fish reared under normal conditions and with non-probiotic feeds. Additionally they found improved skeletal head development with a reduction in deformities ranging from 10 to 20%. From the study, “Alteration in molecular biomarkers supported the faster growth observation. There was significantly increased gene expression of factors involved in growth and development (insulin-like growth factors I and II, myostatin, peroxisome proliferator-activatedreceptors  and ?, vitamin D receptor , and retinoic acid receptor ) when probiotics were delivered via live prey and added to the rearing water. Moreover, probiotic treatment lessened the severity of the general stress response as exhibited by lower levels of glucocorticoid receptor and 70-kDa heat shock protein gene expression.”

[AJP, flickr : a.ruben]

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