It is important to explore the use of alternative ingredients for soybean and fishmeal in aquaculture feeds because the demand and cost for those ingredients are expected to increase in the near future and long-term. Meanwhile, the food processing industry produces large quantities of wastes that often contain organic solids and nutrients (e.g. nitrogen waste and phosphorus) which can be converted in microbial protein (bioflocs) using suspended growth biological reactors. Bioflocs that were collected from such a reactor that treats confectionary food processing effluent water were dried and in shrimp feed as a replacement for soybean and fishmeal. A control diet (without bioflocs) was compared to three diets that replaced soybean (10, 20, and 30% biofloc inclusion) and two diets that replaced fishmeal (10 and 20% biofloc inclusion). The control and biofloc diets were formulated to be equivalent for levels of crude protein, total fat, crude fiber, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and sodium. Five juvenile shrimp were stocked per tank and each dietary treatment was tested using 8 replicates over a 35day feeding trial. Dietary treatments had some impact on shrimp performance. No differences (P>0.05) in shrimp performance were observed between the control and the diets that included bioflocs for survival (97.5 to 100%), growth (2.16 to 2.40g/wk), harvest biomass (687 to 732g/m2), or food conversion ratio (1.50 to 1.66). These results indicate the bioflocs harvested from a suspended growth biological reactor that treats food effluent water can successfully be used in shrimp diets.Alternative & sustainable protein source for shrimp culture.

The experiment consisted in evaluating the productive behavior of fattening chicken, fed with fish meal, with different levels of inclusion of fish solubles, obtained starting from stickwater which was stored in plant for different times. Five hundred and sixty, non-sexed, four days-old Hubbard broilers chicken, were used, distributed into seven treatments with four replications of twenty chicken each one. The experimental design was at random blocks, with a 2x3 factorial arrangement, in which the variables were: a) storage time of the stickwater (6 and 24 hours), and b) levels of inclusion of fish solubles in the fish meal (4.6, 9.3 and 14.0%), including a comparative basis which were suited to a standard or common fish meal, without incorporating fish solubles. The evaluations were live body weight variations, food consumption, alimentary conversion and chicken death rate. The increases on live weight of the chicken, for the total period, fluctuated between 1568 and 1698 g/chick; the food consumption varied from 4045 to 4437 g/chick; the alimentary conversion was from 2.46 to 2.79 kg/kg and the death rate reached a value of 2.14%. It was concluded that the use of fish solubles in chicken feeding did not alter their productive behavior. The results showed that it is feasible to retrieve the fish solubles, starting from stickwater stored in plant for up to 24 hours, with consequent environmental and economic profit for the industry.