Photo credit: Muhammad Hafeez-ur-Rehman (Pakistan), Description: Muhammad Hafeez-ur-Rehman and Abdel Rahman El Gamal (Founder of the website)
The inserted picture was taken inside a feed mill in Pakistan. Before having commercially produced feed, fish farmers used to formulate feed based on earlier experience or simply on trial bases.
In the present, several feed mills are furnished with extruders. The volume of produced feed could be estimated from the species composition of aquaculture in Pakistan. According to FAO statistics, total aquaculture production in 2016 amounted 156,430 tons; out of which, cyprinids represent 97.7% while tilapia, crustaceans (freshwater and marine water), as well as other freshwater species share the remaining 2.3%.
The ingredients used in fish feed are locally available products with no imports. The plant-based ingredients include sunflower meal, soybean meal, rice polish, rice bran, and maize gluten while animal-based products include fish meal, bone meal, feather meal (hydrolyzed), and others.
It worth noting that the cost of fish feed represents an obstacle to fish farming industry in Pakistan especially when compared with the farm-gate prices of produced fish species.
