Large-Scale Biofloc Tank Culture
of Tilapia in Malawi –
a Technical Success Story
Ray Kourie
Malawi — a Fish
Eating Nation
Although Malawi
is endowed with the
ninth largest lake in
the world and the third
largest and second
deepest lake in Africa,
overfishing resulted in
the collapse of the tilapia
fishery around 1990-
1991. Tilapia, known
locally as chambo, is the
country’s favorite fish
and now costs from US$
4.00-8.00/kg (R55-110/ FIGURE 1. Imhoff cones are used to measure biofloc volume in BFT tanks at Chambo Fisheries.
kg) for whole or live fish.
This is a result of market scarcity which is unfortunate considering
the massive demand for the fish and its abundant availability at very
affordable prices (< US$1.50/kg) prior to 1990. Population growth
at nearly 3 percent per annum in Malawi since 1990 has put the
anticipated supply shortfall of fish in the country at around 80,000 t
for 2017 based on sustaining 1990 per capita supply levels.
Tilapias are the preferred fish and the national dish in the
country. A substantial market exists for producers capable of
providing whole fish more competitively than dressed broiler
chickens, less than a cost of US$2.40/kg (R33.00/kg) in Malawi.
Under favorable economies of scale and scope, tilapia production
using biofloc technology represents an attractive investment
proposition if that selling price can be matched.
Biofloc Technology
Biofloc Technology (BFT) is a relatively new and potentially
revolutionary technology that is especially productive for tilapia
and shrimp aquaculture. BFT is a sustainable and environmentally-
friendly method of aquaculture that controls water quality and
harmful pathogens along with providing value-added production
of microbial protein feed for the aquatic farm system. Bioflocs
are clustered aggregations of microbial communities such as
phytoplankton, bacteria, and living and dead particulate organic
matter (Fig. 1). Shrimp and tilapia especially benefit from BFT due
to their ability to filter-feed on floc in the water column, thereby
reducing feed costs by improving feed conversion.
The beauty of BFT is in the mechanisms for ammonia removal
from water. Using feeds with a carbon to nitrogen (C/N) ratio greater production schedules, management systems and executed start-up,
than 15 results in the dominance of heterotrophic bacteria as the
major pathway for the removal of toxic nitrogenous compounds via
assimilation into new
bacterial cell biomass.
BFT simultaneously
provides an abundant
source of “bacterial
plankton” and a
rich source of good-
quality protein
and nutrients for
filter-feeding fish
and shrimp — BFT
is then rather like
killing two birds with
one stone. Figure 2
provides a schematic
of the process of
Biofloc Technology
(BFT) to promote nitrogen uptake by heterotrophic bacteria which
then becomes a food source for tilapia and shrimp.
Experience raising tilapia in BFT, where feeding rates per unit
area are at least 4 to 5 orders of magnitude greater than shrimp BFT
systems, is limited. Knowledge gaps remain about BFT engineering
economics, tilapia feeding systems and bioenergetics, cost factors
and the economics of this new technology relative to conventional
tilapia aquaculture systems. Insightful experience gained at Chambo
Fisheries fills many of these knowledge gaps.
Chambo Fisheries
Chambo Fisheries is purportedly the world’s largest tilapia
biofloc technology (BFT) tank farm and the largest such tank farm
in Africa, located on the outskirts of Blantyre, Malawi (Fig. 3). The
farm became operational in 2013 based on the mandatory production
of Mozambique tilapia Oreochromis mossambicus and Shiranus
tilapia O. shiranus due to restrictions that forbid the importation and
culture of farmed breeds of Nile tilapia O. niloticus in the country.
Despite the slow growth of Mozambique and Shiranus tilapias,
compared to the best farmed breeds of Nile tilapia, good flavor
quality without purging, low feed conversion ratios (FCRs), year-
round production potential (upon completion of a shallow solar
pond supplemental heating system) and favorable economic factors
has Chambo Fisheries poised for expansion regionally. The system
design was developed by the author of this article in his capacity as
Chief Technical Officer of SustAqua Fish Farms (Pty) Ltd. (SAFF),
a South African concern, who developed the farm blueprints,
monitoring and management training.
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Vertically Integrated Farm Design
Chambo Fisheries operates a vertically integrated farming
operation that includes a quarantine facility, broodstock pairing
tanks, an artificial incubation room for hatching eggs collected from
female brooders, a dedicated nursery system, purging tanks, a moist
feed milling plant, an ice plant and cold-storage facilities apart from
the Biofloc Technology (BFT) grow-out tanks. Figure 4 details the
farmed production cycle of Shiranus tilapia at Chambo Fisheries.
The farm has eight large round-ended (R-ended) grow-out
tanks, each holding 780 m3 of water and capable of producing up
to 100 t of tilapia per tank in a year, or up to 130 kg/m3 of effective
rearing volume per year via a multi-cohort sequential production
schedule, although rearing densities average only around 20 kg/
m3. Because of the cool climate near Blantyre at 1130 m above sea
level, all production facilities require placement within greenhouse
enclosures. Supplemental heat is sourced from shallow solar ponds
(SSP) coupled to a hydronic heating system that includes stainless
steel heat exchangers built into the tank floor that are regulated by
thermostatically actuated heat exchange pumps.
The design of the R-ended BFT grow-out tanks by SAFF at
Chambo Fisheries is novel in many respects. The tanks include a
built-in lamella separator for solids capture and removal. Control over
floc concentration in the water column and the retention time of fecal
and organic material is achieved by regulating water flow through
the lamella separator from a full-width floor drain in the main tank.
Water is pulled through the lamella separator through development of
a water head differential at the far end of the central channel by using
a multiple-pod airlift pump that permits flexible control over water
pumping rate.
Every aspect of the BFT R-ended tank design aims to minimize
capital and operating costs, taking full advantage of the superior
hydraulic environment created by the integrated R-ended tank
design, creating a beneficial streaming effect while improving the
driving concentration gradient for oxygen transfer by carefully
selected and positioned aeration devices.
Forced moderate exercise has been shown to induce muscle
hypertrophy, improve growth rates and reduce the energetic costs
of protein accretion. Fish that are fed under continuous moderate
exercise exhibit a shift in metabolism to derive energy for swimming
activity largely from carbohydrates and lipids rather than protein,
a survival mechanism to spare protein loss from the muscle. This
results in fish at harvest with a lower fat content while FCRs are
reduced, growth is enhanced, flesh texture firmness is improved, and
fillet yields are elevated marginally (more plump fish relative to their
body lengths). Horizontal water velocity control in the range 15-30
cm/sec is achieved by adjusting the submergence depth of the paddles
on paddlewheel aerators.
Multi-cohort Production
The farm design has been tailored to take advantage of the
benefits of continuous sequential production where each grow-out
tank is stocked and harvested every three weeks. This production
strategy is enabled by using screened compartments (Fig. 5) where
fish are moved in a conveyer fashion every three weeks to a larger
compartment using simple crowding screens. This management
technique results in production output yields of 4.6-5.8 t every three
weeks. This elevates the production to capacity (P:C) ratio to 5.5-6.2,
26 J U N E 2 017 • W O R L D A Q UACU LT U R E • W W W.WA S .O R G
FIGURE 2.
A schematic of
the process of
biofloc technology
to promote
nitrogen uptake
via heterotrophic
bacteria that
becomes a food
source for tilapia and
shrimp.
FIGURE 3. A battery of eight 766-m3 multi-cohort sequential SAFF-BFT
grow-out tanks at Chambo Fisheries near Blantyre, Malawi.
indicating the high rate of crop turnover relative to system carrying
capacity.
The use of a multi-sequential, multi-cohort production system
in essence doubles output production and halves input power costs
in comparison to batch production, which yields an effective P:C
ratio of only 2.4. Economic viability is greatly enhanced due to
the doubling of production output based on the same investment
in equipment and infrastructure compared to a batch production
system. This unique innovation by SAFF, called the SAFF One-Tank
Husbandry Approach, was first pioneered by the company in the
Middle East on two RAS farms and a third RAS farm in Malawi.
Shiranus tilapia reach an average marketable weight of 218 g
in 189 days from hatch at a temperature range of 27-29 C. Although
purging fish to improve flavor quality is practiced, it is unnecessary
in well-managed BFT systems because the fish carry no off-flavors or
flavor taints. Fish are sold whole on ice and no processing takes place
on site.
Specialized Feeds Produced On Site
Feeds — including broodfish diets, starter feeds and specialized
C/N ratio feeds — are produced on-site using a low-cost moist-pellet
milling plant that produces sinking pellets of medium to low water
stability. The major components of the Chambo Fisheries feed plant
include a hammer mill and a combination grinder, mixer and moist
feed pelletizer, and a horizontal dryer and grading sieves for starter
feed production on-site.
Feeds for fish >5 g are all animal protein-free and are based

FIGURE 4. Farmed production cycle of Shiranus tilapia from a four-tank
biofloc technology module producing up to 400 t/yr of 218-g fish year-round.
FIGURE 5. A single multi-cohort sequential 766-m3 SAFF-BFT grow-out
tank at Chambo Fisheries.
solely on oilseed meals and maize plus vitamin and mineral pre-
mixes. In addition to premixes, additives include choline chloride,
vitamin C, monocalcium phosphate, an organic acid, molasses used
as a nutritive binder and most importantly the use of mycotoxin
absorbent which is mandatory under BFT conditions in Malawi due
to the high prevalence of aflatoxin and other mycotoxins in locally
sourced maize.
Best results were achieved with a 20.2 percent protein feed
that provides an input C/N ratio of about 15.5 based on the use of
bioenergetic feeding rate models constructed by SAFF where FCRs
average about 1. Meal intervals were spaced four hours apart and the
day’s first meal size was the largest at 50 percent of the daily Feed
Allotment (dFA). Tests conducted using feeding trays indicated that
all feed is consumed at the specified meal intervals, meal percentage
of dFA and feed applied within five minutes. The ability to custom-
formulate feeds on site allows for adjustments to the formulation
with ease. During the start-up of BFT, over the first 45-60 days, feeds
require additional vitamin C fortification and sometimes the addition
of crushed garlic to improve the immune response in fish until the
biofloc becomes mature.
After three months of continuous operation, it is necessary to
reduce mineral inclusion levels in BFT tanks, particularly metals
such as copper, iron and manganese as these tend to accumulate and
are recycled through the biofloc. An iterative metal homeostasis model
has been constructed that allows for the optimization of customized
diets for BFT by SAFF given response data derived from actual
systems.
Bioenergetics and Feeding Strategy
Feed often makes up 55-65 percent of the final farm-gate
production cost in conventional tilapia culture systems, such as
greenwater ponds, lake-cage culture, and recirculating aquaculture
systems (RAS). Chambo Fisheries has been able to routinely achieve
FCRs that average around 1 feeding a 20.2 percent protein feed (equal
to a C/N ratio of 15.5) raising Mozambique and Shiranus tilapias.
Such huge shortfalls in the supply of protein in formulated feed means
that fish must obtain the balance of their needed protein — ranging
from 55-60 percent of total required protein intake — through filter
feeding on biofloc. This is not surprising considering the high carbon
conversion efficiency via the “heterotrophic microbial loop” of around
40-60 percent into heterotrophic bacterial cell biomass and the very
short trophic pathway (lower trophic energy losses) of microbial
aquaculture systems. The basic pathway is dissolved C + N → C + N
in microbial biomass → C + N in farmed organisms.
Table 1 illustrates the advantage of biofloc-raised tilapia at
Chambo Fisheries, achieving impressive performance metrics of
36.6 percent Net Protein Retention (NPR) and 20.9 percent Net
Energy Retention (NER) on an edible meat yield basis. Based on
results achieved at Chambo Fisheries, bioenergetic feeding rate
models include the contribution of biofloc harvested by filter feeding
tilapia, ranging from 20 to 25 percent of the Digestible Energy (DE)
requirements of live-weight fish. Bioenergetic feeding rate models have
not been properly applied to biofloc tank culture of tilapia and process
optimization studies by the global research community are needed.
The work at Chambo Fisheries by SAFF represents first attempts to
optimize feeding rates, considering the contribution of biofloc grazing
towards meeting a portion of the daily DE requirements of the fish
reared.
For NPR, biofloc tilapia production is more than 100 percent
more efficient than tilapia production in a RAS system and 162 percent
more efficient than lake cage culture (Table 1). These results suggest
that properly managed biofloc tank culture of tilapia is potentially the
most efficient form of feedlot animal production, outperforming lamb,
broiler chickens, pigs and beef steers as well as feedlot aquaculture
systems raising Atlantic salmon in net-pens and tilapia under typical
lake cage culture, greenwater pond farming and RAS conditions in
terms of protein recovery on an edible yield basis (Table 1).
From an economic perspective, results at Chambo Fisheries
represents a 50 percent feed cost saving when compared to feeding
fish on conventional 32 percent protein feeds raised in a RAS. The
merits of BFT include a significant reduction in the final farm-gate
production cost of raising tilapias to around US$1.30/kg (about R17.70/
kg) in Malawi in 2016. A comprehensive economic study based on
data gathered at Chambo Fisheries shows BFT farms to potentially
produce tilapia at about 60 percent lower cost than large-scale cage
culture, 34 percent less than RAS and 8.5 percent less than greenwater
pond farming, assuming all farms are located in or near Lake Malawi.
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Water Use Efficiency
Another big advantage of BFT is the massively reduced water
requirement compared to conventional tilapia aquaculture systems.
Currently Chambo Fisheries uses around 150 L of water to produce
1 kg fish, which compares well against greenwater pond culture that
requires 2500-5000 L/kg of fish. The high annual fish yields per unit
tank surface area and volume and reduced water use in BFT opens
up great possibilities for applications in greenhouse enclosures on the
highlands of Africa and on the periphery of major cities, reducing
transport logistics to urban markets. The results obtained by Chambo
Fisheries clearly highlight the merits of BFT as a competitive and
sustainable alternative low-cost intensive feedlot technology for
tilapia aquaculture.
Environmental Sustainability
BFT tilapia along with RAS farms, particularly when
incorporating an aquaponics component, with or without duckweed
(Lemna spp.) nutrient recovery lagoons designed to achieve zero
effluent status, represents exemplary Best Management Practice
(BMP). Direct loading of organic solids and dissolved nitrogen and
phosphorus emissions to receiving surface water bodies can be
eliminated in BFT and RAS farms, thereby comparing favorably to
lake-cage culture operations that are characterized by high N and P
28 J U N E 2 017 • W O R L D A Q UACU LT U R E • W W W.WA S .O R G
emissions and solids loadings into sensitive lake ecosystems such as
Lake Malawi.
Four selected tilapia grow-out technologies were compared
(Table 2) on the basis of the following sustainability indicators:
• Feed conversion ratio (kg feed/kg edible weight),
• Whole carcass protein efficiency (%),
• Nitrogen emission (kg/t protein produced),
• Phosphorus emission (kg/t protein produced),
• Land use (t edible product/ha), and
• Consumptive freshwater use (m3/t).
By these measures, the SAFF-BFT system performs best,
followed by the SAFF-RAS. Greenwater pond farming has poor
input:output nitrogen and phosphorus efficiency ratios, likely
caused by high N losses through volatilization and denitrification
to the atmosphere and P losses to the sediment, despite being a low-
cost production technology. Clearly, the lake cage culture model
represents a relatively less sustainable form of intensive tilapia
aquaculture (Table 2) where no opportunity exists to recover neither
dissolved and fecal-bound nutrients or organic matter that can
overload the nearby benthic environment of lake ecosystems.
The Future of SAFF and Chambo Fisheries
BFT promises to revolutionize tilapia and shrimp aquaculture
industries globally. Some leading scientists believe that harnessing
the flow of microbes to fish represents the next revolution in food
production. Chambo Fisheries aims to expand operations into
warmer regions of Malawi and internationally using the same design
templates with minor improvements (a second generation BFT
system) to be supplied by SAFF, based on technical successes at the
less-than-ideal site on the outskirts of Blantyre, Malawi.
SAFF has moved operations from the Middle East and Sub-
Sahara African countries to focus on South Africa in support of
various initiatives, including BFT farms that include an aquaponics
component and multitrophic land-based marine RAS farming of
several high-value finfish species on the East Cape coast and Atlantic
salmon farming on the West Cape coast.
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