RAS Specialist Begins Pangasius Fingerling Improvement Program in Vietnam

Recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) specialist Alpha Aqua is piloting a new model for raising pangasius fingerlings in Vietnam, it told Undercurrent News.

In recent years the inconsistent supply of fingerlings has emerged as one of the key factors in making pangasius a tricky species to work with, with low survival rates and generally poor quality contributing to low supply and historically high prices in 2018.

This has prompted investment in R&D among some key players in the sector, including Vinh Hoan Corporation, Viet Uc Seafood Corporation, and Pharmaq.

A huge swathe of Vietnam's production remains small-scale, independent farmers, which may not benefit from the investment being carried out by the biggest firms. Instead, Alpha Aqua -- working in Vietnam with R&D and consultancy firm Fresh Studio -- plans a model which can quickly benefit the smaller farms.

Pangasius raised in the NANO RAS at 20 days old

It aims to develop protocols around the use of a small turnkey filtration unit, called a "NANO RAS", at sites where it will raise pangasius eggs to 30 days old, creating "champion" fingerlings with far higher survival rates and strength than are currently the case.

"Traditionally eggs are hatched and put into a nursery ponds where you pretty much hope they survive; you get quite low survival rates and quality," Alban Caratis of Fresh Studio told Undercurrent.

"Our plan is to sell 1 gram fingerlings to nursery farmers 'pre-nursed'. We'll control their light, water temperature, feed, and so on, so they will be very strong. But selling them at 1g means nursery farmers are not cut out of the chain -- they get much higher-quality products to sell, and buying them in at 30 days old also means they can run more growth cycles per year, so it should be win-win."

Alpha Aqua's chief operating officer for veterinary and biological farmer expertise, Ramon Perez, acknowledged that margins at every step of the pangasius farming business are tight, and the intention is to improve that, not cut someone's margins even finer. 

He suggested the nursery farmers who join Fresh Studio and Alpha Aqua's service will also be invited to help test another innovation it and Fresh Studio is working on -- a water treatment "box" which floats in ponds, acting as a "third lung" and increasing carrying capacity and ecosystem stability. Pilot trials have already begun on this product, producing very promising results in boosting the productivity of tilapia ponds.

"In this way, I hope we are starting to create a holistic model of services which can really make a difference to pangasius farming," said Perez.

Source: Undercurrent News