Artemia or brine shrimp belongs to the animal kingdom, phylum of arthropoda , subphylum of crustacean, class of branchiopoda, order of anostraca, family of artemidae and genus of artemia. Linnaeus (1758) and Leach (1819) called it "Cancer salinus" and "Artemia salina”, respectively. The latter name is because of the effect of salinity on morphological growth and development of artemia. Two species of artemia in Iran are: Artemia urmiana and

© 2013 Zarei, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Artemia parthenogenetica. The first is native of Urmia lake and the second was observed in 12 regions of artemia habitats in Iran.

Artemia spreads in tropical and sub tropical regions in saline environments of the world, and over 500 artemia regions are discovered around the globe. Nine species of artemia were recognized in these regions.

More than two million kilograms of dried cysts of artemia with 0.4mm diameter are transacted in world markets every year. It is used as an aquaculture feed for hatched naplius. Uniformity of cysts and embryos with diapose has made artemia a unique source of aquaculture feeds. Artemia cysts can spread by wind and migratory birds.

Artemia contains 40-60% crude protein (dry matter basis) [11] .