The Philippines Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) Region 2 in Cagayan Valley is promoting an innovative pangasius diet that includes adding golden snails to feeds to decrease production costs. Dominador Abalos, a BFAR aquaculture consultant, reasoned that roughly 80 percent of production costs of pangasius farming goes to the purchase of industrial feed.
BFAR Region 2 ran an experiment on modified pangasius feed in the Cabarroguis municipality of Quirino province. In the experiment, nine cages are filled with 144 pangasius fingerlings. Fish in the first five cages were given 100 percent industrial feed, while those in the other cages were fed feed mixed with 40 percent golden snail.
At harvest, pangasius fed with traditional feed weighed an average of 1.4 pounds and those fed with the golden snail mix had an average weight of 1.57 pounds. The new feed mixture may save pangasius farmers 20 percent on feed costs.
Golden snail is 54 percent protein, contributing to the extra weight. A spokesperson for Vietnamese pangasius exporter Seafood From Vietnam stated that its pangasius is fed with a mix of rice bran, soymeal and small fish, which makes the fish feed over 90 percent vegetarian, as an alternative to the increasingly pricey traditional fish feed, supporting Abalos’ finding.
