A Japanese technology company has made a commercial fish diet from just light, bacteria, and air that can rival or beat the nutritional profile of normal fish meal. With some commercial fish farming diets coming under scrutiny, (the feeding of fish to fish,) the potential for sustainable fish nutrition which requires just light and air is interesting, to say the least, and one that we could certainly see spilling over into ornamental fish aquaculture facilities and the wider fishkeeping hobby too.
“Until now, fish feed for farmed fish has mainly been made from fish meal made from processed wild anchovies.” Says Symbiobe Inc., the company behind the new diet, whose vision is to create a symbiosis between humans and the globe through the power of microbes.
“However, due to rising catches and prices, unstable quality due to a decline in zooplankton (a source of nutrition), and the absurdity of feeding farmed fish wild fish, there has long been a demand for a suitable alternative to fish meal.”
“As a method that does not rely on the conventional method of raising fish, development of low fishmeal feed that uses as little fishmeal as possible and incorporates vegetable proteins, etc. is underway, but the current situation is that the nutritional value is still insufficient. Air Feed® is a zero-carbon aquaculture feed that offers a new option to address this current situation.”
How is Air Feed® made?
To produce Air Feed®, marine purple photosynthetic bacteria, photosynthetic organisms that can utilize air as a resource, are cultivated under seawater conditions, where they are exposed to light suitable for photosynthesis and allowed to fix carbon dioxide and nitrogen. The metabolic products, proteins, and amino acids stored by the photosynthetic organisms during this process are used and processed through processes such as collection and drying to produce feed of a size that is easy for fish to eat.
“The resulting Air Feed® has a higher crude protein content (= pure protein plus non-protein nitrogen such as amino acids) than fish meal, and also records an excellent amino acid score. Furthermore, since it contains carotenoids (= red and yellow pigments found in green and yellow vegetables) which have antioxidant properties, Air Feed® is considered promising as a functional feed.”
The science behind Air Feed®
Symbiobe partners with Kyoto University, and the Experimental Farm at Kyoto University, and when conducting feed trials on killifish using Air Feed®, they measured their body length and weight and confirmed that their growth was comparable to that of fish fed with commercially available feed.
The more we learn about bacteria, the more we learn how it can unlock so many benefits for the planet and humankind. To create fish food from bacteria that only need sunlight, and locks up carbon dioxide from the air, would previously have been thought to be science fiction. Symbiobe is also using the same bacteria to create fertilizer for farmer’s fields, greenhouse gas fixation projects, and biodegradable silklike fibers.
If we owned an aquarium fish food company we would be getting onto these people right now. Their technology of “turning air into resources,” is a real thing, it will benefit both fish consumers and fish keepers, it’s zero carbon, (carbon negative even,) it has so much potential to help the wider world, and it’s making us tingle.
Now go to https://www.symbiobe.jp/en/ and start firing off those emails!
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