Reducing Feed Cost in the Culture of Pangasius

Many Asian countries have become interested in the culture of Pangasius. This is due to Vietnam’s success in penetrating the world export market for this fish. At present, Vietnam has reportedly exported over 1 million tons, with major exports to Russia, Europe, Asia and the USA.

Back in the early ‘90’s, Pangasius is relatively unknown to many Asian countries. Today, besides Vietnam who supplies around 89% to the world market, China, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Cambodia, India, Bangladesh and the Philippines have started producing either for their own consumption of the fish or for export.


Compared to Tilapia culture, in which the maximum stock is only 5/m3 in ponds without aerators or in the case of milkfish culture in which maximum stock is 1/m3, in Pangasius culture, the stock ranges 60-80/m3. Furthermore, a harvest size of about 1.5 kg can be achieved in 6 months of culture starting from 2-3 g fingerling size.

Unfortunately, there’s very little technical information on its feeds and feeding, and there ‘s lack of good Pangasius feed in the market. So at present, many fish farmers use commercial Tilapia feeds. But in most areas where no commercial aquaculture activity is goes on, tilapia feed is not available.

As in any fish grow-out culture, feed constitutes 70-80% of their production cost- if the fish farmer depended entirely on commercial feeds. In effect, many Pangasius farmers are held back by the high cost of feeds and its unavailability in some areas.

Another discouraging thing is the cheap selling price of Pangasius fillet in the world market; it fluctuates to USD 2/kg-USD 3/kg or Php 50./kg farm gate price of live fish. So with the cost of feed at Php26/kg and a feed conversion ratio 1.5, farmers will have to spend some Php39/kg on feed cost alone. This leaves the farmer with a narrow margin if not on a losing end. .

Cheaper Feeds
The use of commercial feed pellet is out of the question if profitability and sustainability of the Pangasius culture are in mind. Farmers have to be resourceful in scouting for cheaper locally available feed ingredients.

Since the cost of finished feed primarily depends on the source and percentage of protein in the feed, substituting a cheaper source resorted. Instead of the usual fish meal and soybean meal that are imported and therefore have very expensive, replacement of either one or a combination of the following are done: fresh trash fish and livestock wastes such as still-born hogs, chicken entrails, fish entrails from the market, fish processing wastes and culled chicken.

These are ground and mixed with rice bran, copra meal, cassava starch and some fish vitamins and mineral pre-mixes. Then a small amount of water is added to the mixture for it to form dough –like consistency.

If one is concerned with bio-security, this can be addressed by boiling the fresh feed components prior to their incorporation with the other feed ingredients. Rice hull or any farm wastes can be used as fuel for boiling these fresh feed ingredients to further minimize on cost.

The formulation can be processed pellets by passing thee mixed feed formula to a motorized meat grinder. In Vietnam, the output of the meat grinder drops directly to the pond where Pangasius is raised.

Farmers may prepare pellets daily and feed these directly to thee fish or sun-dry them for easy storage. In either case, despite the additional labor cost and electricity cost needed to operate the meat grinder, experience show that a savings of 30-50 percent savings on feed cost can be realized.


Toll Processing Of Formulated Feeds
Even if one uses the traditional protein based feed ingredients, such as fish meal or soybean meal or a combination of the two, one can still realize considerable savings if he had his feed toll processed by feed millers.

Not all feed millers use their equipment continuously; some of them have lag time, so they accept toll processing to fill in these gaps. However, they require a minimum volume of feeds to process about 5 tons. This is all right, considering that the prices of the feed ingredients are cheaper if they are bought by the tons. Further, suppliers will only deliver the feed ingredients for free if they are ordered in huge volumes.

One advantage of toll processing is that the fish farmer is assured of the quality of the ingredients and another is that it eliminates the marketing cost and profit margin of the feed miller resulting to cheaper feed cost. A 30-40 percent savings can be realized. For more savings, the feed sacks are recycled.

At first, the procedure seems laborious and difficult. But this is only during the initial preparation stage where sourcing of the raw materials, negotiating with the feed miller and consulting a fish nutritionist for the formulation are done. Once these are established, it will just be a matter of calling the feed supplier over the telephone and the ingredients will be delivered to the feed mill.

The feed miller will then process the feed based on the formulation of the feed nutritionist and bag them.

Proper Feeding Management
To further reduce the cost of feeds in the grow-out culture operation of Pangasius, proper feeding management should be practiced. It should be remembered that excess feed pollutes the rearing water easily and wastes money.

Most feed companies recommends a feeding regime based on the arbitrary weight of the fish at a given day of culture. More often than not, the recommended feeding regime is twice the amount of what the fish actually requires. So the amount of feed for that matter should be based on the gross weight of the fish to be fed. This can be computed through the procedure below:
1. Have a good estimate of the fish population. This means that recounting of the stock maybe necessary after the fish have rested after the transport like 2-4 weeks after stocking. The fingerlings maybe placed temporarily in a net cage in order to perform this procedure easily. Daily mortality should be monitored and recorded also.
2. Conduct regular sampling of the fish for weight every 2 weeks. This is done by sampling about 20 pieces of the fish with a scoop net and weighing them. The average body weight (ABW) can be calculated by dividing the total weight of the fish by the number of fish in the sample.
3. Compute for the gross weight (GW) of the fish. To figure this, multiply the ABW with the standing population at the time of the sampling.
4. Compute for the daily ration (DR). Normally, a feeding rate (FR) of 2.5 to 3% of the body weight of the fish is given daily if there is no other source of food in the water. For fish cultured in water with high productivity and at low stocking rates, no feeding maybe necessary. Otherwise, a supplementary feeding rate of 1-1.5% of the body weight maybe given to Pangasius if natural food is insufficient.

To compute for the DR, multiply the GW with the FR. This represents the ration for the day. If feeding is done twice a day, the FR should be divided into two. One half is given in the morning and the other half is given in the afternoon.
5. Feed gradually. Pangasius are active feeders; they feed when they are hungry and go away when they are full. Despite the computed daily ration, the appetite of the fish should be taken into account. It should be remembered that extremes in water temperature and stress lessens the appetite of the fish. Feeding should be stopped once the fish refuse to eat.

Minimizing feed cost is possible and will entail combinations of strategies to achieve profitability and sustainability. With the low cost of the market price of harvested Pangasius, fish farmers should be resourceful in scouting for cheaper feed ingredients. As for the commercial raisers, toll processing their feeds maybe a better option since they require bigger volume of feeds. So, whether its backyard or commercial Pangasius raising, a prudent feed management scheme has to be employed for a more efficient feed use.
*This article was published in the January 2010 issue of Agriculture Magazine