Fattening fish on bits of chicken and veggie oils

With the aquaculture industry dependent on fish-based feed, a researcher has come up with a formula that uses poultry by-products and vegetable oils.

Dr Rossita Shapawi said the industry currently relied on trash fish, which is defined as fish with little or no commercial value.

"Trash fish is not sustainable for the long term and so we have to use artificial feed, but we don't produce quality feed. The imported feed is also expensive," said Rossita, who is with Universiti Malaysia Sabah's Borneo Marine Research Institute.

"I was keen to develop a feed that was not only profitable for aquaculture farmers but one which would also contribute to the environment.

"A quality locally-produced feed not only cuts costs but also lessens the pressure on wild fish stocks used for fish meal and fish oil production."

Her hard work has paid off.

Her study on "cost-effective feeds using a novel blend of ingredients for the culture of humpback grouper" resulted in two prototype dietary feeds, earned her a doctorate from UMS in August and netted a silver award at BioMalaysia 2008 in Kuala Lumpur last month.

Testing of the U-MS/SM2 feed found a 100 per cent survival rate of the humpback grouper with a final feeding cost of RM5.70 for every kilogramme of fish bred.

In comparison, the use of trash fish feed showed a mere 50 per cent survival rate of the same grouper species and a final feeding cost of RM15 for every kilogramme of fish.

Testing of the U-MS/SM1 feed showed a 95 per cent survival rate of the humpback grouper at a final feeding cost of RM7.94 for every kilogramme of fish, which was cheaper than a commercial diet in the market which led to the same survival rate but at a feeding cost of RM10.23.

"While we still use some fishery-based ingredients, the innovation here is to replace some amount of fish meal with poultry by-products and fish oil with palm oil and other types of vegetable oil.

"After we fed the humpback groupers, we analysed them for protein content, fat and body weight and the results were good.

"This is the trend now to look for sustainable ingredients," the aquaculture nutritionist said.

Rossita said the humpback grouper, also known as the mouse grouper, fetched more than RM300 per kg at seafood restaurants and that the species was chosen for the study because the institute had been able to breed it after years of research.

She said cost-effective feeds were critical in the success of any commercial culture of groupers as feed was one of the most expensive components in aquaculture.

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Fattening fish on bits of chicken and veggie oils