Nutritional Value of Starterfeed for Valuable Types of Fish Grown in Commercial Conditions

Abstract

The article describes aquaculture as a main factor saturating the domestic market with high-grade fish products in the world. In last decades, food production in this sector has increased by 12 times with an average annual increase of 8.8%. The Republic of Kazakhstan has rather high potential for developing different lines of commercial fish farming. Modern industrial fish farming is based on keeping fish in fully controlled water environments. In modern conditions, when fish are kept in cages and pools, natural feed is no longer of fundamental importance. Artificial feed is widely used; it should be balanced for the main nutrients and meet the needs of aquaculture facilities. There have been given data on nutrient requirements for the fish species that are new for aquaculture of Kazakhstan: larvae and juveniles of zander, tilapia and clarid catfish. There have been given the standards of adding components to the feed recipes, suggested the premix recipe for producing these feed and shown the quality parameters of starter feed for larvae and juvenile of zander, tilapia and clarid catfish developed in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The nutritional value of starter feeds for these fish species has been defined. Halyk Balyk LLP conducted the production tests in order to determine the effectiveness of using the feed and their uptake by the fry. Feed for trout Aller Agua produced in Denmark served as a reference. Research and business experiment showed that food coefficient of the feed prepared for clarid catfish (0.92) is slightly inferior to the imported feed, with fry survival rate at 71%, average daily increase at 54.3 mg. The designed recipes of starter feedstuff may solve the problem of import substitution for feed products in the country. The data on nutritional needs of the fish mentioned may be used to calculate the feed recipes for fish farms.