South American fish species suitable for aquaponics: a review

Sara M Pinho,Maria Célia Portella,Karel J Keesman,Simon Goddek,Luiz H David,Fabiana Garcia

doi:10.1007/s10499-021-00674-w

Sara M Pinho, Maria Célia Portella + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-021-00674-w

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Abstract

Tilapia and catfish are the most popular fish species in aquaponics. However, they are not well-accepted in all markets, and finding alternative species is important in order to increase the variety of food products and meet market demands. South America has several potential fish species for aquaponics systems. Encouraging the implementation of integrated aquaculture systems by providing information about the production of South American species can help to increase the supply of high-quality food and aquaculture diversification. Thus, data for five South American fish species with potential for aquaponics were compared with existing data for the main traditional warm water species in this system, tilapia and catfish. Moreover, the degree of suitability of the novel species for these systems in terms of zootechnical performance, tolerance to water quality and nutritional composition of fish flesh were discussed. The South American species considered were jundia or silver catfish (Rhamdia quelen), yellowtail lambari (Astyanax lacustris), pacu (Piaractus mesopotamicus), tambaqui (Colossoma macropomum) and snook (Centropomus spp.). Their description and the tabular comparison with the most traditional aquaponic-cultured species show they are suited for this production system. How suitable they are will depend on the system design, as well as the regional characteristics of the market where they will be produced.

Highlights

A food production system is considered sustainable when it efficiently uses natural resources to produce high-quality food for human consumption (Wunderlich and Martinez 2018; Wilfart et al 2013)
Food supply in South American countries is mainly based on monocultures; aquaagriculture-integrated food production systems are not yet widespread (Rodrigues et al 2019; Liu et al 2018)
The author reported a difference between the optimum feeding rate for plants (12 g) and for fish (18 g) after 88 days of experiment. These results indicate the importance of continued investigation into jundia in aquaponics, in decoupled systems, where the conditions can be adjusted to allow optimum performance for fish and plants

Summary

Introduction

A food production system is considered sustainable when it efficiently uses natural resources to produce high-quality food for human consumption (Wunderlich and Martinez 2018; Wilfart et al 2013). The popularity of tambaqui in the aquaculture sector is due to its fast growth rate, the acceptance of commercial feed, relative resistance to diseases and tolerance of low water quality (Lima et al 2019; Oishi et al 2010) This species is highly prolific; its reproduction is achieved by hormonal induction during the breeding season (Rodrigues 2014), resulting in high availability of tambaqui juveniles (Gomes et al 2010). As reported for jundia, the investigations carried out with tambaqui used RAS as an experimental system to evaluate other productive management systems or parameters, and they were not designed to evaluate the growth performance of tambaqui in such systems These studies mainly focused on nutrition (Paulino et al 2018; Júnior et al 2017; Nwanna et al 2008), reproduction (Gallego et al 2017; Maria et al 2015), management (Dantas et al 2020; da Costa et al 2019), behaviour (Reis et al 2019; Barbosa et al 2009), genetics (Ariede et al 2020; da Silva et al 2019) and health (Barbas et al 2020; Paz et al 2019). In the field of aquaponics, snooks are still unknown and no reports of their production in these systems were found

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Conclusions