32 Aquaculture

Water durability
determines quality of
shrimp feed
How long feed pellets sustain in water before falling apart for the unwanted dust development, which par-

– the water durability – is a significant physical property ticularly transpire during the transport of feed.
Also here the abrasiveness of raw materials
of today’s industrial shrimp feed. Pellets with insufficient ranges between high and low.
water durability not only remain in water unconsumed but In most cases a low pelletising ability corre-
also contribute substantially to the water pollution of sponds with a high abrasiveness or vice versa
ponds. The deteriorating feed is hazardous to the animals. (Table 1). There is, of course, a wide variation
in the physical properties of raw materials. The
By Joachim Hertrampf, Kuala Lumpur, quality of the pelleted feed, therefore, may vary
Malaysia as the raw materials used vary (J.H., 1984;
Thomas et al., 2000).
Producing shrimp feed of the highest possible water dura-
bility is of imminent importance. This, however, is not an Pellet binders
easy task because many factors contribute to the water Pelleted feed for terrestrial animals can be manufactured
durability – negatively as well as positively. The pellet qual- without applying a pellet binding aid. But producing pel-
ity is substantially affected by the pelleting ability of raw lets for aquatic animals that are immersed into the water,
materials. There are raw materials that have a high pel- the use of a pelleting aid is a ‘must’. The range of pellet-
leting ability, such as soybean meal, and others that have ing agents and products with pelleting properties is rather
a low one, e.g. rice bran and many raw materials that have wide. They can be classified as (Hertrampf, 1992):
a high crude fibre content. Fishmeal and wheat flour, • natural materials;
normally used at a higher level in shrimp feed, have a medi- • wood-processing by-products;
um pelleting ability (Hertrampf, 1992). • plant products with pellet binding properties;
Another important quality criteria is the abrasiveness of • synthetic compounds.
pellets. A high abrasiveness of feed pellets is responsible Here it should be refrained from discussing the pros
and cons of individual pelleting agents. However, an ‘Ef-
ficiency Index’ may help to select the most suitable pel-
Table 1 – Pelleting ability and abrasiveness of selected raw
let binder (Hertrampf, 1992) (Table 2). The lower the Ef-
materials used for aquaculture feeds
ficiency Index, the more cost and performance efficient
Crude Fat Crude Pelleting Abrasiveness the pellet binder. However, it is quite common to use a
protein % % fibre % ability combination of various pellet-binding agents.
Blood meal 80.0 1.0 1.0 Low Low
Cottonseed meal 41.0 1.5 13.0 High Low Technical measures
Fish meal 66.0 8.0 1.5 Medium Medium The pellet mill is the most influential factor for produc-
Groundnut meal 48.0 5.0 7.0 High Low
ing the required water durability. The best pellet-binding
Rice bran 14.0 0.6 15.5 Low High
agent will not give a high quality pellet if technical mea-
Soybean meal 45.0 0.5 5.0 High Low
sures are insufficiently applied. The application of steam
Wheat flour 14.0 2.0 1.0 Medium Low
Wheat bran 14.0 3.5 11.0 Low Low and temperature to the conditioning process has to be
Source: CPM, quoted by Hertrampf (1992) right so that the starchy components gelatinise properly.
To chose the correct thickness of the pellet die and the use

Feed Tech Volume 5, Number 5


Many factors contribute to the water durability of pellets.
of not worn-out pellet dies are of imminent importance
for obtaining water durable pellets. These are only some
of the technical applications in the process of manufac-
ture of feed pellets.
Water durability requirements
Gaus (1985) reported that in the past shrimp farmers in
Central America requested a water durability of six hours.
This, of course, is an inadequate request. It is impossible
to produce a pellet that only disintegrates after six hours
and is still in a shape that will be eaten.
Today’s water durability of shrimp pellets is in the range
of two or three hours. This time is absolutely sufficient
because Mishra (1999) observed in his trials with juve-
nile shrimps, fed on crumbled and pelleted starter feed,
that the pellets were consumed within 30 to 60 minutes.
Although pellets in water should not fall apart, a certain
amount of chemo-attractants have to leach from the pel-
lets so that the animals get the signal to find the feed. Lemm
(1983) has demonstrated that 50% of a salmon population
died in the presence of feed that was free of chemo-
attractants.
Although the water durability of aquaculture feed is of
most imminent importance, there is still no standardised
method or a generally accepted procedure available for
testing the water durability of pelleted aquaculture feed.
Feed Tech Volume 5, Number 5
Aquaculture 33
Table 2 – Efficiency Index for selection of a suitable pellet
binding agent
Efficiency Index = (X x 5) x (Y x 2) x Z
3xW
Whereby:
• X = Water durability
• Y = Inclusion rate
• Z = cost of pellet binding agent per tonne of feed
• W = Any divisor for reducing the index (otherwise it might be rather high)
• 5 & 2 = factor expressing the importance of criteria
• 3 = number of criteria
(Heidenreich, 2000). Putting some pellets in a glass beaker
filled with water is a very common procedure to test the
water durability of industrial shrimp feed. From time to
time the whole is stirred uncontrolled. This kind of stir-
ring speed is similar to an hurricane gust. Such tests are
useless. They do not provide acceptable and reproducible
results.
More accurate and precise methods for evaluating the
water durability have been developed. In her trials Boon-
yaratpalin (1984) in Thailand measured the disintegration
of pellets by weight loss in water after determined time.
The weight loss in water is used as a parameter for the wa-
ter durability. This type of test has been used in other re-
search work (Anonymous, 1987; Pascual, 1990; Dominy
and Lim, 1991). Although the results are very promising,
the procedure is very time consuming and, therefore, not
applicable for routine tests in a feed mill.
Three parameters were used by Löwe and Apelt (1985)
to estimate the water durability of pellets. They mea-
sured:
• the floating and sinking behaviour of pellets;
• the swelling of pellets in water and in humid air;
• the turbidity of the water.
This procedure required more time for testing the three
parameters than the method developed by Boonyarat-
palin (1984) and is not suitable for practical conditions.
The ‘leaching rate’ by measuring the visible light ab-
sorption after determined time was used by Lee and Tsay
(1991). The obtained results were not particularly en-
couraging. In this context Mayers (1991) remarked that
the leaching of water-soluble nutrients is only during the
first several minutes of immersion significant.
The Waterbase Method
Due to lack of generally accepted measures for testing the
water durability of aquaculture feed, the Quality Control
34 Aquaculture
fresh water. However, there was suspicion that pellets
Table 3 – Chart for judging the water durability of shrimp feed
may react differently to seawater, particularly with regard
pellets by points from 1-10 (Waterbase-Method)
to the disintegration of the pellets. The correlation between
Swelling Cracks in pellets 1
Disintegration Points point rating in fresh water and seawater, respectively, re-
Little to normal none none 10 vealed that there is no difference whether tests are carried
Normal less than 1/3 none 9 out in seawater or fresh water. The correlation coeffi-
Normal 1/3 to 1/2 about 15%2 8 cient was r = 0.88 (n = 20) and significant (Farooq,
Normal to full 1/2 to 2/3 about 25% 7 1999b).
Normal to full 2/3 and more about 50% 6
Full total about 75% 5
Dry matter loss test
Full total almost total (90%) 4
In addition to the development of the Waterbase Method
Full total total 3
Full (within few minutes) - Total (within few minutes) 2 comparisons with objective testing methods have been car-
Full (immediate) - total (immediate) 1 ried out. This applies particularly to the dry-matter-loss
Source: Farooq, 1998 test. This test can be considered as the most objective pro-
1
Number of pellets that developed cracks but did not fall apart cedure for evaluating the water durability.
2
Visual estimation of fallen-off particles in comparison to the volume of the feed present Fist results were disappointing because the correlation
coefficient between point rating and dry-matter-loss was
r = -0.22 only. By amending the assay of procedure (Fa-
Table 4 – Improving the correlation between point rating of feed rooq, 1999a) the obtained correlation was much stronger
pellets and dry matter loss by amending the dry matter loss (r = -81) (Table 4). This means that the Waterbase Method
procedure is satisfactorily accurate.
n Water durability Dry matter loss r On the other hand, the correlation between rating by
Mean points SD ± Mean % SD ± points and turbidity of the water are less convincing. Cor-
69 8.7 0.4 11.8 2.9 -0.21 relation coefficients of only 0.56 and 0.63 (after one hour)
35 8.2 0.76 8.9 3.0 -0.22 and 0.58 and 0.67 (after 21/ hours) were obtained (Di-
2

38 8.3 0.51 13.1 2.21 -0.45 vakaran, 2000b). These correlations are not strong enough
12 8.6 0.3 10.5 3.2 -0.68
that the turbidity degree of the water can be used for rou-
94 8.0 0.37 19.4 6.05 -0.81
tine determination of the water durability of the pellets.
Source: Farooq, 1999a; Divarkan, 2000a
The results show in addition that the turbidity after one
hour and 21/ hours are almost the same. This corroborates
2

Unit of The Waterbase Ltd. Developed its own method for
routine testing (Farooq, 1998; Divakaran, 2000a). Al-
though it is a subjective test and still rather time consuming,
the obtained results are very satisfactory. The judgement
of the water durability is based on three parameters:
• swelling of the pellets;
• cracks in the pellets;
• disintegration of pellets.
For rating the water durability a ‘judgement chart’ rang-
ing from 1 to 10, has been developed (Table 3). For the
best water durability a maximum of 10 points can be giv-
en and a minimum of 8 points are required for passing the
test.
Samples of 5.0 g in a glass beaker full of water are me-
chanically stirred at five minutes intervals. Each stirring
lasts for 20 seconds at a speed of 300 rpm to simulate the
water movement in the ponds. Reading is done after 1, 2
(by one person) and 21/ hours (by three persons).
2 available. ●
Since implementation of the method various modifica-
tions were necessary. So far all tests were carried-out in
with the findings by Meyers (1991) that leaching of wa-
ter-soluble nutrients only during the first several minutes
after immersion of pellets is significant.
Outlook
Shrimp farming can only sustain through an ongoing ef-
fort to improve farm management, feed quality and feed-
ing practices. The physical properties of pelleted shrimp
feed are part and parcel of these struggles.
These articles (see also ‘Pellet or crumbles makes a dif-
ference in shrimp feeding in Feed Tech 5.3) have tried to
show possibilities that can contribute to the needed efforts
to make shrimp farming more cost efficient. Nevertheless,
there are still many ‘white spots on the shrimp farming
map’, which are worthwhile eradicating for the benefit of
all parties involved. However, this requires much more re-
search work for which public funds are insufficiently
References available upon request.

Feed Tech Volume 5, Number 5