There is today a strong will globally to increase the intensive aquaculture production, partly due to the decrease of capture fisheries. In this context, the European aquaculture aims at promoting efficient and sustainable production of safe seafood with the highest quality and nutritional value. In the European Project, DIVERSIFY, six new fish species were selected as potential candidate of farming. Among these species, there is only one freshwater species, the pikeperch (Sander lucioperca). Three main bottlenecks have been identified preventing the success of larval rearing: a high rate of mortality mainly due to cannibalism, a high rate of deformities and a strong growth heterogeneity characterized by important differences in size between larvae of the same age but at various developmental stages. In our experiment, the effects of four environmental factors with two modalities were tested on the development of larvae at different stages. The main goal is to  determine the optimal combination of these factors, which could give the best survival and development of the fish. A fractional factorial experimental design (24-1) of resolution IV was used to study simultaneously the effect of these four factors and their possible interactions. 

This study shows the effects of four environmental factors on the development of larvae in pikeperch. This experiment allows identifying some combination of factors, which may help solving some current bottlenecks identified during the rearing of pikeperch larvae by fish farmers. Light intensity, water renewal rate and the cleaning period have a direct impact on growth, deformities and inflation rate of the swim bladder. The water current direction has no impact on these development parameters. This multifactorial approach allows to combine several parameters and to show a global impact and development parameters. These results of the first of four successive experiments planed in the DIVERSIFY project allows determining the rearing conditions of the next experiments, which will focus on nutritional and populational factors.