Healthier shrimp

In a series of studies conducted at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Brazil with Litopenaeus vannamei, research team leader Dr Alberto Nunes found that krill meal and krill oil both showed promising potential as ingredients in shrimp feed. Krill meal fully replaced anchovy fishmeal and soya lecithin with no reduction in growth performance and with a higher economic margin compared with the standard shrimp diet.
Krill oil at 2.5% replaced all cholesterol and partially replaced fish oil and soya lecithin in a diet with 18.75% anchovy fishmeal and delivered the highest economic performance of all diets tested. In subsequent trials, krill oil demonstrated an ability to support shrimp performance in hypersaline conditions.
Although when compared to the vannamei in control tanks there were no statistically significant differences in the weight of the shrimp, there were significant cost savings when using krill ingredients in comparison with the base diet.
Shrimp farmers, armed with this information, are archiving these same results in ‘real world’ situations.
“In 2007 we introduced QRILL™ Antarctic krill meal into our shrimp feeds with the help and support of Aker BioMarine,” says Erwin Tjia, general manager of PT. Luxindo Internusa in Indonesia. “Since then we have not looked back because the alternatives are less effective and more expensive.”