Culture experiments on the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus pulcherrimus fed an artificial diet

The omnivorous sea urchin Strongylocentrotus pulcherrimus inhabits the coast of Japan. It also ingests foreign foods, which are not normally present in the natural habitat. In cultures, foreign foods, such as white fish meal, shellfish meal, milk casein, gelatin, soybean meal, yellow corn, alfalfa and yeast were provided in the form of a moist and soft material and their ingestion and digestibility were examined. The foreign foods were prepared by mixing with agar-agar. Digestibility of the diet, and that of nitrogen contained in the diet, was estimated as 54.7 and 64.7% dry weight. Sea urchins cultivated over a period of 5 months on such a foreign diet exhibited 24% increase in wet weight during this period. Occasionally, the ingestion of artificial food suddenly decreased, but was soon resumed upon supplying a hot-water extract of brown algae.