In aquaculture and ornamental industries, copepods are recognized as preferred live feeds for marine fish larvae over commonly used organisms such as Artemia and rotifers. Marine fish larvae fed with copepods show better survival and growth. Despite obvious advantages of copepods as the live feed, their use is still limited owing to low productivity and cost-efficiency when mass cultivated. Copepods from the genus Acartia are good candidates for a live feed because their body size, swimming behavior, and biochemical composition are suitable for many marine fish larvae which have small mouth gapes. In addition, Acartia species produce dormant eggs which can be stored and hatched to feed fish larvae. Acartia steueri Smirnov is widely distributed in the coastal waters of the western Pacific Ocean, and is an essential food source for the larvae of commercially important fish in their natural habitats. Different dietary microalgae affect the egg production rate, hatching success, survival rate, growth rate, and the population growth of copepods. One of the underlying bottlenecks in the intensive cultivation of copepods is fatally low survival rate during their larval stages. Calanoid copepods including genus Acartia feed on live microalgae. In the present study, in order to clarify the favorable dietary microalgae for larvae of Acartia steueri, the nauplii individuals were fed with four mono-microalgal diets and one mixed-microalgal diet to measure their survival rate. The present study conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, the nauplii hatched within 24 hours were individually reared in 6-well plates under three diet conditions (mono-diet of Tetraselmis suecica, Rhodomonas salina and Isochrysis galbana) in April 2019. Survival rate and development stages of the copepods were measured every two days. In the second experiment, the nauplii were reared in 600 mL beakers under three diet conditions (mono-diet of T. suecica, Chaetoceros gracilis, and a mixed diet of T. suecica + C. gracilis at 1:1 carbon ratio) in April 2020. Survival rate and development stages of the copepods were measured at day 10 and day 20 during the incubation duration.In the first experiment, the survival rate at day 20 was 26.8 ± 7.2％ when fed with T. suecica, which was the highest value among the mono-microalgal diet conditions. However, only 0.6％ of individuals fed with T. suecica were developed to the adult stage (copepodid VI). In addition, the malformation at first antennas was observed from the copepodid individuals fed with T. suecica. T. suecica is well known to be rich in amino acids but with poor fatty acid content. These results might suggest that T. suecica is the favorable diet for early developmental stages (i.e. nauplii) of the copepod A. steueri, but has a nutritional problem for the later development stages of life cycle. In the second experiment, the ratio of individuals developed until adult stages was maximized under the mixed diet condition of T. suecica and C. gracilis, and this mixed diet can be considered a favorable diet for A. steueri larvae in the present study
