MINOT (AP) - The tiny eggs at the Garrison Dam National Fish Hatchery are about the size of table salt. If they survive, it would be a first for a federal hatchery, officials say.

The eggs are burbot, an eel-like fish that tribes seek to replenish on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. The question now for hatchery manager Rob Holm and his staff is what to feed them.

Their yolk sacs will be their source of food for the next couple of weeks.

The only information available to Holm and his staff about raising burbot comes from the University of Idaho, where attempts to raise the fish a year ago ended when the fry refused feed and died. Holm thinks that the tiny eggs at the Garrison hatchery have a chance to survive if biologists can come up a microscopic food supply that the burbot will accept.

"We've got about 10 artificial feeds. We've been picking out anything with the size anywhere close to what these guys could eat," Holm said. "We're hatching paramecium, zoo plankton, the copepods."

Paramecium are single-celled organism protozoans. Copepods are tiny crustaceans that live among plankton. Both are known to be important food sources for many fish and the hope is that the tiny burbot will take a liking to such microscopic menu items.

"Once we get to that stage, into feeding, we'll know something," said Holm. "It'll either be thumbs up or start over. I'm anxious to see what happens, to see if we can find a diet that works."

The hatchery took on the burbot project after a request from the Fish and Wildlife Management Assistance Office at Lander, Wyo., which provides fisheries assistance to the Shoshone and Arapaho Tribes on the Wind River reservation.

If the burbot at the Garrison Dam hatchery survive, genetic testing will be conducted to confirm that they can be cleared to be shipped to the reservation.

"If they have a need, then these fish are going. I expect some of these to go over there," Holm said.

The adult burbot used for spawning at the Garrison hatchery came from the Missouri River, but the North Dakota Game and Fish Department does not want any young burbot returned to the river.

Burbot is a popular sport fish in many Minnesota waters, but Minnesota burbot - even those in the Red River - come from a drainage separate from the Missouri and have a different genetic makeup. For similar reasons, even the Souris River drainage would not be acceptable for stocking Missouri River burbot.