Major farms switching to food fish

Jessica Lim, Straits Times AsiaOne 18 Jul 15;

Dwindling profits from the sale of aquarium fish have forced some major ornamental fish farms here to change tack - they have started cultivating food fish like grouper and plan to do it on a large scale in a few years' time.

One farm even plans to start a live seafood market.

Of the estimated 70 ornamental fish farms here, at least five - Apollo Aquarium, Panda Aquatic Centre, Nippon Koi Farm, Max Koi Farm, and Dreamfish Inc - have embarked on making the change.

The farms use sea water or freshwater recycling systems to rear food fish in concrete inland ponds.

They are helping to boost the output of Singapore's food-fish farms. The country currently produces 8 per cent of the food fish it consumes - a figure that has risen by only four percentage points since 2010 - well short of the 15 per cent target.

The owner of Nippon Koi Farm in Jalan Lekar in Choa Chu Kang, Mr Pay Bok Sing, 53, started rearing food fish in small quantities in 2013. Of his farm's 300 ponds, about 100 of the largest ones now rear fish such as marble gobi and grouper, and prawns.

Demand for the ornamental koi fish, he said, has halved over the past five years. "Few people are breeding koi as a hobby," he told The Straits Times, adding that he now produces 11/2 tonnes to 2 tonnes of fish a month for restaurants and wet markets.

"We figured that the demand for food will always be there; people will always need to eat," he said.

Singapore is still the world's largest exporter of ornamental fish like mollies, guppies, goldfish and koi, but exports have fallen to levels similar to those a decade ago.

The latest UN Comtrade statistics released in May showed that firms here exported about US$56 million (S$76 million) worth of fish in 2013, comparable to the US$54 million worth of fish exported in 2005.

At Max Koi Farm in Neo Tiew Crescent in Lim Chu Kang, food fish now make up 30 per cent of the farm's revenue. Owner Max Ng, 44, started tinkering with food-fish production two years ago because "the tropical fish industry was coming down and an alternative was needed".

He has so far ploughed $3 million into his food-fish business, and plans to go into full-scale commercial farming by year end, and to sell to supermarkets.

Mr Ng believes land-based food-fish farms have an advantage over sea-based ones.

The water used in land-based farms is treated and recirculated in self-contained systems that protect the fish from disease. This lowers mortality rates and allows more fish to be reared in a single tank. The chance of a plankton bloom is also zero, said Mr Ng.

A plankton bloom hit earlier this year, killing some 500 tonnes of fish at farms in Changi, Lim Chu Kang and Pulau Ubin.

Meanwhile, the owner of Panda Aquatic Centre, Mr Kan Tien Siong, 69, has 5,000 jade perch fingerlings in his farm now.

He is targeting the live-fish market in Singapore, and intends to slowly build up demand for the fish, which is eaten as sashimi in some countries.

"This fish has lots of potential," he said, adding that 10 of his 35 ponds now house food fish.

Dreamfish Inc is developing a food-fish farming system and will have 2ha of its 8ha farm devoted to food-fish farming in about two years.

When that happens, managing director Nicolas Chia, 44, expects a turnover of about $4 million a year from food-fish rearing.

Apollo Aquarium started rearing shrimp in 2013, and is now growing pilot lines of grouper and coral trout. It plans to become fully commercialised in a year's time.

An Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) spokesman said a handful of the estimated 70 ornamental fish farms here are exploring food-fish cultivation and that some have approached the AVA for technical assistance.

"Indoor land-based farming has its advantage of better environmental control," said the spokesman. "However, Singapore has limited land with competing needs. Thus, AVA will continue to work with farmers to intensify agriculture land use, raise productivity and capability."

Fitness trainer Chua Ping Wei, 32, said: "Fish from a tank on land seems better. There is more control over its quality.

"It will also be good if I have somewhere to buy live seafood at good prices."

Koi farm owner changed tack - and did it his way
Straits Times 18 Jul 15;

One could say that Mr Pay Bok Sing, owner of Nippon Koi Farm, did it his way when he ventured into rearing seawater food fish in his land-based farm.

From making his own seawater to creating a filtration system, to mixing the fish feed, everything is self-made. Mr Pay decided to diversify when his ornamental fish farm was hit by the koi herpes virus in 2010, which wiped out thousands of his fish. "That was when I thought I probably should diversify," he said, adding that it was also around the time when profits from koi started to fall. "So I started studying how to rear food fish."

Mr Pay visited kelongs but realised that they were vulnerable to plankton blooms. So he decided that it was safer to rear food fish in his land-based farm.

He has since invested $400,000 in his new venture.

Armed with information from online research, the 53-year-old invented a seawater recycling system for each of the roughly 100 tanks now being used to rear food fish at his Neo Tiew Crescent farm.

He then bought barrels of minerals, including magnesium and calcium, and started mixing them to make seawater.

But when the fish were put into the seawater he created, some started to act like "zombies", Mr Pay said in Mandarin, explaining that they moved very slowly and seemed to be in a state of stupor. Others became ill, he added.

"We would monitor the (fish) and change the mix," he said.

It took numerous attempts over two months to get the mix right, which he described as "hitting the jackpot". Thereafter, he started producing the secret concoction in large volumes. His fish feed is also a self-made formula that includes fish meal, spirulina and flour.

His tank system - which filters, oxygenates and cleans seawater in three-hour cycles - allows the farm to rear 500 prawns per sq m of water. That is more than five times the amount compared with a similar-sized cage in the sea without such a system. It also lets him rear three times the number of groupers in a given space.

Mr Pay has come full circle. His business started in 1973 as a pig, chicken and food fish farm in Sembawang owned by his father. Mr Pay, who has Secondary 4 education, started helping out at the family farm when he was 10 years old.

He took over the business and started rearing koi in 1986 after a friend's farm shut down and he was given 20 breeder koi.

Mr Pay sold his first batch of groupers to wholesalers in 2013. He started rearing prawns last year. "Now, we are trying to breed lobsters and crabs. The plan is to open a live seafood market here soon," said the father of three.

Jessica Lim