| Summary: | The controlled nursery culturing of mollusc spat produced by millions in commercial hatcheries is an intermediate step in mollusc farming which is receiving more and more attention. Different technologies for nursery culturing indoors as well as outdoors have been developed at different places. The principles are always basically the same and consist of culturing postlarvae of a few milimeters in size up to a size of a few centimeters in densities as high as possible in specific devices in seawater which is eventually enriched with live unicellular algae or inert foods. This paper reports on the first results obtained in Belgium in an indoor experimental nursery with spat of Ostrea edulis, Crassostrea gigas and Venerupis semidecussata .On the basis of the results obtained in this small experimental unit, a semi-industrial pilot-scale plant has been designed and has recently been built at the border of the Sluice-dock in Ostend, Belgium. This pilot nursery has been conceived as a multivariable unit the ultimate goal of which is to determine the cost-benefit of an industrial nursery utilizing the heated effluent of a power-plant.
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