100% Replacement of Artemia in Shrimp Hatcheries

Let’s Get Rid of All That Algae Culture, Too!

Zeigler, a privately owned feed company in Gardners, Pennsylvania, USA, with customers in more than fifty countries, has been in business for 75 years and currently markets a complete line of aquaculture feeds—including shrimp growout feeds and shrimp hatchery feeds.

Zeigler recently announced a new product that completely replaces the need for Artemia in shrimp hatcheries!  Neil Gervais, Hatchery Product Manager at Zeigler, who has managed several large shrimp hatcheries in the Western Hemisphere over the last two decades, developed the product.

The new product announcement sparked a long discussion on the Shrimp List, a mailing list for the shrimp farming industry.

Excerpts

Ifran (microbiologist_bd@yahoo.com): That certainly is good news.  I would like to have seen more information on the actual price of the product.  Generally, these new things are costlier than traditional options.  We heard a lot about the indirect savings, but not much about the actual price.

Neil Gervais (ecneil2@yahoo.com): Feel free to contact Zeigler directly about prices.  The product has a direct cost that’s lower than traditional options.

Laurence (ecotao@yahoo.com): I recall using this Zeigler product back in 2003 or 2004, so it was probably not the new formulation.  I compared its palatability to Cyclop-eeze by simply watching shrimp PL behavior in a white dish.  Shrimp PL would respond immediately to the Cyclop-eeze, grabbing and consuming it, swimming right over the EZ particles as if they did not exist.  The product back then also leached out color, tinting the water.

Ben Williams (ben.williams@tekni-plex.com): I helped develop that product back then, and I know Neil has made some dramatic changes to it.  Neil can probably offer more details.

Josh Wilkenfeld (josh.wilkenfeld@gmail.com): I’ve been using various Ziegler products during the last year and a half, including the LZP and the EZP lines and the smaller particle size EZ Artemia.  I’m kind of an old-timer, so I’m a bit uncomfortable about giving up some of the feeding protocols that I developed over the last 30 years.  However, after coming out of the private sector and going to work with Texas AgriLife Research, a shortage of funds and personnel basically forced me into doing things an easier way.  I haven’t had a chance to run side-by-side trials, but the Ziegler products seem to do very well in terms of palatability and acceptance by the larvae.  I’m still not ready to give up on live algae, and I’m not sure I can entirely give up live Artemia between PL-1 and PL-7, when the animals really seem to want and need live pray, but the EZ Artemia definitely seems to work pretty well up through mysis-3.

Again, I did not run controlled trials; I was just taking the easy way out.  I’m sure Neil has done his homework, but there still needs to be some outside verification on a commercial scale.  It does look promising.

Leland Lai (lelandlai@aquafauna.com): Old ways could be expensive ways and in these cut-the-cost times, it might be worth the trials to see how much replacement can take place.  I say this because finding a replacement for Artemia could free us from “Mother Nature” and stabilize the cost of larvae production.

Artemia is not the only thing that shrimp larvae eat.  Think about all the algae you are growing the OLD way.  Algae culture represents 15% to 20% of the operational costs at a shrimp hatchery.  The need to grow your own algae could also be replaced on a 100% basis!

What happens to shrimp hatchery economics when dried or paste forms of Isochrysis, Thalassiosira, Tetraselmis, Chaetocerous and Nanochloropsis come on the market?  It’s well known that large mollusk hatcheries produce algae for about $60 a kilogram (dry weight).  For the rest of the aquaculture industry, the cost is probably $120 to $180 a kilogram.

In the future, your algae may come out of a package!

Josh Wilkenfeld (josh.wilkenfeld@gmail.com): I, and most other hatchery managers, have been very careful about making sweeping changes to our algae and Artemia feeding regimes.  New products usually promise more than they deliver, at least in my experience.  So far, none of them have been successful as 100% replacements, though they have made great supplements.

The last time I spoke with Neil Gervais was at the WAS meeting in Seattle, Washington, USA, in February 2009.  He was on his way to Brazil (I think) to run large-scale studies with the new Artemia product, and I presume the announcement of its availability means he was happy with the results.

I’ve used the EZ Artemia as a complete replacement for live Artemia out of necessity (time and labor shortages, as mentioned earlier), and it worked great at fairly low larval stocking densities, but in a higher density run, I was still fighting cannibalism issues.  However, I only had the smaller size product, and more guidance is needed for its actual use.  I have been using Zeigler’s products as the only supplement to live algae (from Z-1 thru PL-1) for this year’s larval production at our bait shrimp project.  There is no hatchery operator alive who wouldn’t prefer to pour something out of a bottle or a can, rather than have to deal with growing their own larval feeds and the “Mother Nature” element of Artemia cyst supply (and cost).

Neil Gervais (ecneil2@yahoo.com): As Ben Williams mentioned, he was directly involved with the first generation EZ Artemia product a few years ago.  It was part of a package of liquid-based diets and became a quality standard for shrimp hatchery diets.  Since then Zeigler has made some important changes to EZ Artemia.  While always a good diet, we have changed the formulation and sizes offered to make it a more complete replacement for Artemia—at all stages of shrimp larval development.  The original product was offered in the 300-500 micron range only and proved to be too large a particle for zoea and mysis stages.  A 50-200 micron size is now offered.  There is a feeding table included on the EZ Artemia literature sheet on the Zeigler website that gives an indication of feeding levels for each stage and the many benefits of its use over Artemia.  This table is a reference and assumes that hatcheries are only replacing Artemia, not algae and/or supplementary diet regimes.  Please feel free to contact me to clarify this or to aid in modifying it for your own use.  We are providing samples to interested hatcheries.  In tank trials, we have not had palatability or color leaching issues.

Dallas Weaver (deweaver@mac.com): Shifting to 100% replacements for both algae and Artemia may require a shift in feeding strategies and procedures.  Living organisms have an advantage in maintaining nutritional status by having intact membranes and active biological pumps along with the ability to synthesize any nutrients lost by diffusion into the medium.  All other diets face the problem of diffusion when they are feed to a tank where the concentration of nutrients is low.  In other words: leaching.

Using an automated feeding system where small amounts of the artificial feed are constantly added would allow the larvae to consume the feed after it has only been in the tank a short time.  With artificial diets, the optimal concentration in the water may be a lot lower than with live food.  Having less leaching time per particle may be of greater benefit than having more feed.

With artificial feeds, we can also expect more water pollution issues and may have to do more water flow or treatment and recycling.  These minor changes in system design and operation will require a lot of work, but the technology is well understood.

I have always had the feeling that artificial diets should be good enough for our larval shrimp, but leaching meant that what you feed the larvae is not what the larvae eat.  With leaching kinetics being a function of the particle diameter squared, cutting the diameter in half decreases the diffusion time by a factor of four.

Josh Wilkenfeld (josh.wilkenfeld@gmail.com): Very good info Dallas.  Virtually all of my commercial-scale work has been in Asia and Mexico, where automation is a bit more difficult, but labor is less expensive.  Back then, I fed every two hours—24/7—for exactly the reasons you mentioned, primarily to keep the food fresh and minimize water quality issues.  It’s interesting to note that liquid feeds seem to keep the tanks cleaner, especially when working with reduced or zero-exchange systems, at least up to about PL-1 or PL-2.  When you use probiotics, the water tends to look kind of ugly, but the shrimp seem very happy.

I’m still not ready to completely walk away from live algae, at least during the zoea stages (and even early mysis).  I do think that EZ Artemia can replace dead and live Artemia nauplii up through PL-1, and the animals can make it all the way without Artemia, but at least using the February 2009 version of the product with Litopenaeus setiferus (part of an ongoing bait shrimp research grant), I think they still do better in terms of survival and growth with the live Artemia.  In all fairness to Zeigler, I was using what now is probably an outdated product in terms of their most recent technology, and at the time I received the product, Neil’s recommendation was that the product could be used as a 100% substitute for Artemia up to PL-1, at which time live Artemia had to be brought into the mix.

Dallas Weaver (deweaver@mac.com): Keep in mind that when you use probiotics and near zero exchange, the probiotic bacteria may incorporating the leached nutrients into bioflocs that become live foods for the shrimp!

Phil Boeing (pboeing@dc.rr.com): And what’s so wrong with old school?  Good quality select algae will get you through without Artemia too!  It’s just not off the shelf and soooo easy as canned whatever.

Henry Sanjuan (henry_sanjuan@hotmail.com): Well, well.  Phil Boeing!  It seems that everyone came out of the woodwork on this one.  Lets hear it for the Old Ways and the Old Timers who suffered through them.

Patrick Wood (patrickjwood@yahoo.com): I agree with Phil on algae—nothing like a pure natural feed for the first stages of life (or so my wife keeps saying).  My guess is that it’s not just about costs and survivals in the hatchery, but a lot more to do with performance during growout.

Alain Michel (alainhenri@aol.com): It has been reported that most of the shrimp (Penaeus stylirostris) hatcheries in New Caledonia have replaced algae with a microparticulate feed in a kind of bacterial floc for all the zoeal stages at a density of 100/liter—and gotten good survivals.

That’s not true.  Total replacement of Artemia was not successful.

Josh Wilkenfeld (josh.wilkenfeld@gmail.com): Hi Alain.  I’ve heard about the no-algae approach before, and yet I also remember that this method failed when an attempt was made to introduce it in Mexico at the Aquanova hatchery.  I’m not yet fully convinced on the complete elimination of algae.

Alain Michel (alainhenri@aol.com): Hi Josh, I don’t remember what kind of microparticulate feed Aquanova used in Mexico.  The technique was developed in New Caledonia using a special microparticulate feed developed by IFREMER in France.  I think they have moved on to other microparticules now, but the interesting thing is that the original formula is still being used on a routine basis in New Caledonia after 20 years, so it must be a pretty good algae replacement.

Sources: 1. The Shrimp List (a mailing list for shrimp farmers).  100% Artemia Replacement.  August 23 to 28, 2009.  2. Bob Rosenberry, Shrimp News International, September 10, 2009.

Country Reports

Australia

Listening In on Shrimp Feeding Behavior

Dr. Bruce Lee, Director of CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) Food Futures National Research Flagship, said CSIRO was designing video and audio analysis techniques to automatically measure how much feed farmed shrimp consume.  “More efficient feeding of shrimp will reduce costs, wastes and potential contamination of the environment around farms from nutrient rich effluent,” Dr. Lee said.

Dr. Nigel Preston, Food Futures Flagship Research Group Leader, said the key to increasing shrimp yields and improving their health and quality is to develop a better understanding of their feeding habits in farm ponds.  “To achieve this we are developing software which uses mathematical algorithms to analyze shrimp consumption and growth patterns,” Dr. Preston said.

AQ1 Systems, CSIRO’s technology partner on the project, will receive more than a million dollars through CSIRO’s Australian Growth Partnership program to develop the hardware and software for the project.

To listen to the sound of a shrimp biting a feed pellet, click here.  On the page that appears, click on the Broadband link.  The sound file should automatically open in you media player.  You’ll hear Dr. Nigel Preston explain how the technology works and get to listen to the sound of a shrimp biting a feed pellet.

Information: Dr. Nigel Preston, Theme Leader, Breed Engineering, Food Futures Flagship (phone 61-7-3826-7221, fax 61-7-3826-7222, email Nigel.Preston@csiro.au).

Sources: 1. GROWfish (Gippsland Aquaculture Industry Network, Inc.).  GROWfish eNewsletter (subscribehtml@growfish.com.au).  Dissecting the Dining Habits of Prawns.  August 13, 2009.  2. CISIRO.AU.  What Is the Sound of One Prawn Eating?.  Reference: 09/76.  No Date.

Belize

Blogger—Haney Farms Limited For Sale

Although it wasn’t posted to the Internet until August 2009, this blogger’s story is several years old:

One of the highlights of Belize was Sapodilla Lagoon.  We went there because it is one of the most protected areas of Belize and we had heard that there was a large weather front heading our way.  I wasn’t feeling well so Jeff went out exploring in the dinghy.  He didn’t come back for hours, and I started to get a little nervous.  Finally, he arrived and told me about his adventure.

Motoring around in a dinghy, he found a large man-made canal.  Curiosity got the best of him, and he motored up the canal and found Herman Haney at the end of it.  After a three-hour tour of Haney’s shrimp farm, Jeff finally came home, with plans to go back the next day.

On our arrival the next day, Haney’s wife, nodding at her husband, said, “Most people retire and buy a Lazy Boy, he retired and started a shrimp farm.”  We were treated to a grand tour of the shrimp farm.  Jeff inquired about buying a small box of frozen shrimp, but Haney said local laws prevented him from selling shrimp to the public, so he took us out to one of the ponds where the shrimp were big enough to be harvested (a few weeks early, but still big enough) and he got one of his guys to cast net us some shrimp.  We ended up with a 48-quart cooler full of whole shrimp!  We spent hours deheading and peeling them.

Haney Farms Limited For Sale for $12 Million: This 2,040-acre Belize property encompasses orchards, gardens, undeveloped lands, a shrimp farm and a proposed 434-acre residential and marina development on the protected waters of the Sapodilla Lagoon.  In 1982, Herman L. Haney, a dapper Alabaman gentleman who loved the tropics flew over the property (now known as Haney Farms Limited) and bought it from the air.  Information: Looey Tremblay, RE/MAX Belize Real Estate Agent and Broker (Looey@BelizePropertyCenter.com).

Sources: 1. LastParadiseSailing.Blogspot.com.  Adventures in Belize.  August 10, 2009.  2. PR-USA.net.  Charter your Course to this Southern Belize Marina Development/RE/MAX Presents Prime Belize Marina Property.  Candee Tremblay.  No Date.  Website Visit on August 13, 2009.

Ecuador

Empagran—3,500 Hectares of Shrimp Ponds

Empagran has been farming and exporting shrimp since 1975.  It currently produces 15,000 million pounds of shrimp a year from 3,500 hectares of ponds.  Its hatchery produces 100 million postlarvae a month.  Its feed mill produces 58,000 metric tons of feed a year.  It uses 30% of it on its own farms and sells the rest to shrimp farms in Ecuador and other countries.  Its processing plant can handle 90,000 pounds a day, and everything it produces is traceable.

To view four short videos (about a minute each) on Empagran’s hatchery (Semacua), feed mill (ABA), farms and processing plant, click here.

Information: Empagran, Km. 15 1/2 vía a la Costa, Guayaquil, Ecuador (phone 593-4-287-0280, fax 593-4-287-0285, email info@empagran.com, webpage http://www.empagran.com/news/videos.aspx).

Sources: 1. FIS United States.  Empagran Shrimp Exports.  Margaret Stacey.  August 22, 2009.  2. A visit to Empagran’s website on September 2, 2009.

India

Prawnto Investment

Prawnto owns two, large, certified shrimp farms, one in the state of Tamil Nadu and the other in the state of Andhra Pradesh.  It sells some of its production through three kiosks in the city of Bangalore.  Now, with an investment of $2.45 million, it plans to take the kiosks national with 150 franchises across the country.

Prawnto’s shrimp is certified by the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) and the Central Institute of Brackish Aquaculture (CIBA), and the company has also received an “in principle” approval from the National Fisheries Development Board to set up the kiosks.

To invest in one of the 72-square-foot kiosks would cost $16,355.  Prawnto is looking at locations in malls, urban transport centers, food courts and airport terminals.

Prawnto’s existing outlets provide fresh shrimp in a variety of offerings from Mumbai Butter Pepper Garlic Prawns to Texas Barbequed Shrimp.

Source: FNBNews.com.  Prawnto to Invest Rs12 cr. to Expand Prawns Business, Scouts for Franchisee Partners.  August 31, 2009.

Malaysia

Blue Archipelago and Red Lobster

In June 2010, Blue Archipelago, Bhd., a subsidiary of Khazanah Nasional, Bhd., plans to open a 1,000-hectare, $42.5 million shrimp farm in the state of Terengganu.  Chief executive officer Dr. Shahridan Faiez said the company, which already operates a 400-hectare shrimp farm in the state of Kedah, expects the new farm to contribute $28.3 million in revenue over the next three to four years.  Faiez said, “With the harvest from both farms we will be able to produce a minimum of 15,000 tons of white leg shrimp for the global market.”

Red Lobster: Bill Herzig, senior vice president of purchasing and supply chain innovation at Darden Restaurants Incorporated (USA), which owns Red Lobster, said the outlook for partnership with Blue Archipelago appeared positive!  “We are currently learning about the operations....  There are opportunities for future partnership but nothing much can be said now,” he added.

Source: Business Times.  Khazanah Unit to Operate Shrimp Farm.  August 25, 2009.

Mexico

World Aquaculture Society Meeting in Veracruz

If you plan to attend the World Aquaculture Society Meeting in Veracruz, Mexico (September 25 to 29, 2009), you better make your reservation real soon!

Information: John Cooksey, World Aquaculture Conference Management, P.O. Box 2302, Valley Center, California 92082, USA (phone 1-760-751-5005, fax 1-760-751-5003, email worldaqua@aol.com, webpage https://www.was.org/Main/Default.asp).

Source: Bob Rosenberry, Shrimp News International, September 10, 2009.

Syria

Wanted—Help with Shrimp Farming

R. Chakour (chakour@net.sy): I’m planning on starting a shrimp farm in Syria and need some help.  Is there an organization out there that helps people get started in shrimp farming?  Please contact me with your ideas.

Source: Email to Shrimp News International from R. Chakour on August 23, 2009.

United States

Washington DC—NFI Wants Guidance on Phosphates

The National Fisheries Institute, a non-profit organization of seafood professionals, plans to request that the USA Food and Drug Administration issue guidelines that set limits on the phosphate levels in seafood.  The group intends to survey its members before suggesting limits to FDA next year.

Phosphates are food additives that are used in seafood manufacturing to prevent excessive “thaw drip” from defrosting seafood.  All phosphate treatment results in an increase in net weight of the product due to water retention.  NFI says it is concerned that consumers are paying a higher price for shrimp sold by weight and considers the practice of adding too much phosphate economic adulteration.

Canada, Brazil and many European countries limit the level of phosphates in seafood from 0.1 percent to 0.5 percent of the final product.

NFI would also like FDA to clarify whether labels on seafood should list phosphate alternatives such as bicarbonate soda, citric acid and salt.  The practice of using substitutes only began a few years ago and FDA officials said the issue is a gray area.  Although FDA classifies phosphates as “Generally Recognized as Safe”, they must be listed on a label.

Source: Seafood.com (an online, subscription-based, fisheries news service).  NFI plans to ask FDA to limit phosphates in U.S. seafood.  Jennifer C. Smith.  Editor and Publisher, John Sackton (phone 1-781-861-1441, email jsackton@seafood.com).  August 28, 2009.

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