Fish farming is one of the most profitable businesses in Nigeria and almost guarantees a return on investment. Fish feed is a major expense of fish farming, and in order to minimize input costs, it is cheaper to produce fish feed than to buy ready-made fish feed. High quality fish feeds can be prepared from local ingredients, but these locally produced feeds are unstable or do not float, leading farmers to rely on foreign pellet feeds.
The main ingredients of fish feed include rice bran, fish meal, soybean meal, maize, peanut cake etc., which can be purchased locally. The challenge of making feed in Nigeria is not sourcing ingredients but the technology involved in formulation and processing. Fish feed is usually processed in two ways: by pelleting or extrusion. In order to obtain high quality fish feed particles, extrusion is more popular than pelleting.
Machines for Making Fish Feed
Fish feed extruder, also called fish feed pellet machine, is widely used for producing variety materials into high-grade aquatic feed pellets for fish, catfish, shrimps, crab etc. The final feed pellets have unique shape and good taste, high nutrition and smooth textures. For feeds of fish and shrimp, the floating time on water surface can be adjusted by the extrusion degree adjustment when extruding the pellets.
Currently, floating fish feed extruder has become an ideal for small and medium fish farm (catfish, tilapia, shrimp etc.) holders or fish feed processing plant.
Commercial fish feed extrusion process refers to cook the mixture of feed ingredients under high temperature, moisture and high pressure by means of fish feed extruder within short time, whereby the high temperature is a direct result of friction(dry extrusion) or preconditioning and steam injection (wet extrusion). As a technological treatment, extrusion can make it possible to process a variety of fish feed ingredients, such as soybean, corn, rice, peas and raw materials with high water content. According to the moisture content of raw materials treatment, fish feed extrusion process can be divided into two types – dry type extrusion and wet type extrusion.
Requirements of aquafeed
- Grinding fineness: Proper particle size of ground materials can contribute to lower energy consumption of a feed mill, facilitate the subsequent conditioning process, increase the water stability of aquafeed pellets, and eventually obtain nutritional aquafeed that benefits the digestibility of aquatic animals.
- Size of feed pellet: It is depending on the size of aquatic animal to be fed and its feeding habits.
- Water stability: 45~90 min for shrimp feed and 5~30 min for common fish feed.
- Floating / Sinking ability: Different aquatic animal species live in different depths of water (shallow water, middle water and deep water) and different habitats. Therefore, the feed for different aquatic animals should be sustainable in corresponding depths.
- Palatability: Most of aquatic animals favor feed of special color, scent and flavor.
Floating Feed Production Process
The main process of producing floating fish feed includes Grinding, Mixing, Extrusion, Drying. Although the initial capital expenditure on acquiring equipment may seem daunting, the machines will pay for themselves in the first year buy saving costs and improving production and quality. Therefore, any important fish farmer who wants to have a sustainable and long-term business can invest in floating fish feed processing machines. Floating feed pellets are more cost-effective, improve feed quality and increase profitability for farmers. You can also produce and sell commercially to other fish farmers.
With years of experience in manufacturing and designing customized fish feed plant and feed extruder machines, SUWNIT Machine is popular in Nigeria.
What are the advantages of floating fish feed?
The pellets produced by pelleting sink quickly when they are thrown into a pond or sink, damaging and contaminating the water in the pond and causing waste because it is impossible to detect when the fish are satisfied with feeding. In addition, some materials do not cook well with the granulation method. Extruded floating feeds are favored by Nigerian farmers because they allow observation of feeding processes to prevent wasteful feeding, and processing methods help destroy anti-nutrient factors and other contaminants. Floating feed pellets are also very stable in water.
What makes fish pellets float?
Some kinds of fish food pellets float and some sink. It depends upon the contents of the pellet and how much air is incorporated into the pellet when it is formed in the factory. Floating pellets are loosely pressed when manufactured, so they pellets are filled with many small air pockets. Sometimes the material of which they are made is whipped into a kind of froth before they are extruded into pellet form. This makes the pellets buoyant and they float. Pellets made to sink are generally compressed much more tightly and have almost no air space within. If you check out floating and sinking shrimp pellets, for example, you may see that the sinking pellets have been compressed so much during extrusion that they are somewhat hard and shiny on the outside.