$1m land-based Singapore fish farm opens

Apollo Aquarium's Lim Chu Kang farm will rear groupers
Grace Chua Straits Times 28 Apr 12;

FISH farm Apollo Aquarium yesterday opened a $1 million plant to rear groupers at its land-based Lim Chu Kang farm.

The 12-tank experimental system, which will rear 300kg to 400kg of fish in each tank, is a method to farm fish on land using high-tech water treatment.

Apollo Aquarium is possibly the second farm to rear fish this way. The first, a 1,400 sq m farm in Pasir Ris, rears more than a million sea-bass fingerlings each year for sale to other farms.

Farms such as these are helping to boost the productivity of Singapore's food-fish farms.

The Republic currently produces 7 per cent of the food fish that it consumes, but aims to increase that to 15 per cent.

Another experimental farm in Choa Chu Kang rears freshwater fish, such as tilapia and marbled gobies, but it uses water-cycling technology in high-rise, stackable cages.

In all of these, water is treated and recirculated in self-contained systems which clean it more efficiently. That protects the fish from disease, lowers death rates and allows more fish to be reared in a single tank.

This is not Apollo Aquarium's first foray into such technology.

In 2009, with help from a Spring Singapore technology improvement grant, it built a $600,000 system for its ornamental fish that reduced water usage dramatically and fewer fish died.

Previously, it had lost $70,000 to $100,000 worth of fish a year.

After installing the new system, its losses were slashed to $15,000 last year.

Now, its marine food-fish venture will focus on mouse groupers, a plump spotted fish worth $160 a kilogram live, tiger groupers and hybrid groupers.

The aquarium said it will conduct tests to find the type of feed and conditions that best suit these hard-to-rear, delicate fish, which are native to tropical coral reefs and now heavily overfished.

At conventional farms, the survival rate of mouse groupers is 1 to 10 per cent.

Mr Eric Ng, Apollo Aquarium's chief operating officer, said a high-fat diet for the fish was a no-go. 'After they eat, they sink all the way to the bottom and don't swim, and can develop a fatty liver,' he said.

In a year, Apollo aims to expand to two 200-tank farms, and to rear lobsters and crabs.

It recently signed a $2 million deal with a Vietnamese firm to develop a water-treatment system for shrimp farming.

Fish farm eyes raising food fish supply
Qiuyi Tan Channel NewsAsia 6 May 12;

SINGAPORE: A local fish farm in Singapore is investing in research and development (R&D) to raise Singapore's domestic production of food fish.

Ornamental fish producer Apollo Aquarium started running its marine research farm in Lim Chu Kang this March.

The mouse grouper is one food fish it is trying to breed.

It is serious business. When fully grown -- to table size, or about 500 grammes -- the mouse grouper fetches up to S$180 per kilogramme.

For this, the inland farm has developed a water-recycling system that runs on a small water footprint.

There are 12 tanks in the pilot farm, and that is just the beginning.

The whole system is a test bed that's carefully analysing the water conditions, the feeding regime and the behaviour of the fish.

Ninety per cent of the water is recycled.

Because it is a fully enclosed system, Apollo's chief operating officer Eric Ng said fish are protected from the pathogens that thrive in sea water.

"This salt water we're using in our facility is actually cultured," Mr Ng said.

"We're trying to focus on manufacturing this salt water for our usage, rather than using sea water as our source.

"The difficult part is to understand the minerals needed in this water, the salinity content needed for the young larvae, and also for the grown out fish.

"Sea water has a lot of existing pathogens, like viruses or bacteria. We have to go through a rather tedious process of cleaning it before it can be used. For manufactured or cultured sea water, we can produce clean sea water and use it immediately."

Mr Ng added this could result in more benefits.

"Clean fish, less virus, less bacterial infection," he said.

Apollo's R&D journey into marine fish farming started with a government grant in 2009.

SPRING Singapore's deputy chief executive Tan Kai Hoe said the grant was part of its Technology Innovation Programme, which provides up to 70 per cent funding support for SMEs' R&D efforts.

Mr Tan said: "You can change what is usually seen as a traditional business into a completely different one.

"Look at the current business they're in now. I think they've completely changed the productivity of the business. Completely changed the level of technology, even the level of comfort of the entire business for their workers as well."

For former waste water treatment engineer, Dave Chua, marine aquaculture has given him a whole new arena to apply his skills.

He said: "It's more on adapting because you're dealing with food fish, you have to use non-toxic [methods] in terms of water treatment. It's one of my passions in ensuring we have high quality, safe food fish for the market."

From its research farm, Apollo hopes to expand it into a commercial-sized facility that can supply groupers to the market year-round.

- CNA/wk