The Zebrafish Diets

Introduction
The Zebrafish Danio rerio is increasingly used as a research model in human and animal health, and biological and gene research fields, and is a critical material for the research as they ensure that the outcome of the research are valid to apply to medical prescription or further studies (Van Den Buuse, et al. 2005). However, public perception towards animal welfare has discouraged the use of animals, especially terrestrial animals, in research (Williams, 1988). Sentience or consciousness in fish is still being debated among scientists and welfare advocates, with various parameters (Brown, Culum 2015; Daenen, et al. 2002). This lack of understanding in fish intelligence limits welfare activity and allows scientist to use as research

However, very little is known about zebrafish biology, including their dietary requirements in wild environments. Diet is a critical factor in controlling health to maintain the population of zebrafish in research and to produce constant results from each individual. Diet can also be a critical contributor to changing physical composition as different diets affect animals differently in terms of body weight and length or height gain. Consequently, if future research uses different diets for the same species of animals, the result may contain unwanted nutritive bias and not account for otherwise controllable variability in these features (Spence, et al. 2007). This paper will review zebrafish diet, specifically covering natural diet, aspects of commercial and formulated diets, and physiological influence of diets

However, very little information about has been discovered regarding formulation of diets for zebrafish, and essential nutritional requirements such as optimal levels of protein/amino acids, carbohydrate, vitamin, and mineral still remain unknown. Numerous commercial or scientifically formulated diets using fish meal are available for zebrafish. However there is a large gap between these diets and the zebrafish’s natural diet, as commercial diets are based on fish meal and plant meal while wild zebrafish consume zooplankton, insects and algae. Also, among commercial diets, performance outcomes of these diets are vary significantly and there are no clearly established standards. The insect based diet could be a standard diet option for zebrafish, as zebrafish naturally consume insects and the establishment of population indicates that essential nutrition is adequately provided. The establishment of a standard diet for zebrafish supports and purifies the research methodology as it will potentially remove nutrition related bias from research outcomes. It is important to continuously study to increase knowledge of zebrafish nutrition especially using insect meal, as there are many gaps in this