Food distribution equipment for individually-housed juvenile lobsters ( Homarus spp.)

The construction and operation of two simple mechanical feeders, one for use with dry pellets, the other with a suspension of mysid shrimps in seawater, are described. Both feeders were designed to facilitate the feeding of large numbers of individually-housed crustaceans held in laboratory and nursery water table systems. The dry feeder delivered between 2 and 6 pellets to 91% of the individual compartments with less than 2% receiving no food. The wet feeder delivered between 3 and 9 mysids to 73% of the compartments with 2·1% receiving no food. The distribution of empty compartments was random so that it was unlikely that the same animals would go without food after two successive feeds.