Phytoplankton production:

Phytoplankton or microscopic algae is a varied group of aquatic plants that has a great variety of forms, sizes and strategies of reproduction. Is possible to find phytoplankton attached to rocks or floating freely in the water.

Phytoplankton are autotrophs, beings who photosynthesize by taking solar energy and transforming it into organic compounds. They are organisms who form the base of the nutritional food chain. Additionally, they help maintain the good quality of water because they consume some nutrients like ammonium and nitrites, as well produce oxygen.

In general, marine phytoplankton is characterized as having a great amount of proteins, vitamins, carbohydrates, amino acids, raw fiber and other essential nutritional compounds for the consumption of fish, crustaceans and mollusks.

Phytoplankton is maintained in the laboratory (they start in test tubes and move to tanks of 100 L); then the phyto batch is moved to the Massive Culture Area, where it is cultivated in large amounts using twenty thousand liter tanks capacity.

These algae cultures provide food of excellent quality to several organisms: fish larvae, shrimp larvae, mollusks, artemia, rotifera.

Zooplankton production:

Parque Marino also produces micro animals or zooplankton, which are used to feed other zooplankton such as Artemia (micro crustaceans) and Rotifera that in turn are used to feed shrimp larvae, fish larvae, sea horses and oysters.