Incubation of Landlocked Fall Chinook Salmon Eggs in Petri Dishes

The use of production‐sized incubators for experiments on eggs from fish populations that have limited egg numbers can be problematic because of the risks associated with potentially hazardous treatments on large numbers of eggs. This study evaluated the technique of incubating small numbers of eggs from landlocked fall Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha in petri dishes from shortly after fertilization through hatch. In the first experiment at 9°C, each dish held 10 eggs. Three water change intervals were used before the eyed stage: every day, every 3 d, and every 7 d. After egg eye‐up, each original water treatment was divided into water changes of either every day or every 3 d, creating a total of six water change treatments. Water change treatments were the same in the second experiment, but each dish held 15 eggs and the water temperature was 11°C. No significant differences among the treatments were observed in survival to the eyed egg stage or to hatch in either of the experiments. The start of hatching was 55 incubation days in the first experiment at 9°C and 46 d in the second experiment at 11°C. The results from this study indicate that 10 and 15 landlocked fall Chinook Salmon eggs incubated at temperatures of 9°C and 11°C, respectively, can be successfully hatched in petri dishes with water changes of every 7 d before eye‐up and every 3 d after eye‐up, making this a viable technique for use with future experimentation.