Aquacultural Engineering 34 (2006) 172178

www.elsevier.com/locate/aqua-online

Bio-filters: The need for an new comprehensive approach

Yoram Avnimelech *
Department of Environmental and Civil Engineering, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel
Received 12 August 2004; accepted 2 April 2005

Abstract
The aquaculture industry struggles to profit in light of low product prices, increasing costs of inputs and constrains due to
environmental, water and land limitations.
Intensive aquaculture systems are relevant to efficiently produce fish and shrimp. The two important limiting factors of
intensive aquaculture systems are water quality and economy. An intrinsic problem of these systems is the rapid accumulation of
feed residues, organic matter and toxic inorganic nitrogen species. This cannot be avoided, since fish assimilate only 2030% of
feed nutrients. The rest is excreted and typically accumulates in the water. Often, the culture water is recycled through a series of
special devices (mostly biofilters of different types), investing energy and maintenance to degrade the residues. The result is that
adding to the expenses of purchasing feed, significant additional expenses are devoted to degrade and remove 2/3 of it.
There is a vital need to change this vicious cycle. One example of an alternative approach is active suspension ponds (ASP),
where the water treatment is based upon developing and controlling heterotrophic bacteria within the culture component. Feed
nutrients are recycled, doubling the utilization of protein and raising feed utilization. Other alternatives, mostly based upon the
operation of a water treatment/feed recycling component within the culture unit are discussed.
The present paper was presented in the biofilter workshop held in Honolulu, 811 November 2004. The main purpose of this
paper was to raise new ideas and new options toward the planning and operation of intensive fish/shrimp ponds.
# 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Intensive aquaculture; Active suspension ponds; Microbial control

There is a common desire to achieve higher and

higher yields. However, achieving very high yields
and getting listed in the Guinness book of records is
not the goal of the aquaculture business. The
justification for intensification stems in specific
culture, environment and economy reasons. Several

* Tel.: +972 3 7522406; fax: +972 3 6131669.

E-mail address: agyoram@tx.technion.ac.il.

reasons listed here have different priorities under

different conditions.
1. Environmental regulation prohibiting or limiting
water disposal.
2. Bio-security concerns limiting water intake.
3. Water scarcity and/or cost. Conventional aquaculture consumes 210 m3 water to produce 1 kg
fish. In Israel, for example, water cost is rising to ca
US$ 0.4/m3, i.e. 0.84 $/kg fish.

0144-8609/$ see front matter # 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.aquaeng.2005.04.001

Y. Avnimelech / Aquacultural Engineering 34 (2006) 172178

173

Table 1
Schematic presentation of pond intensity levels, approximate annual fish yields and limiting factors
Pond type

Intervention

Approximate yields
(kg/ha year)

Limiting factors

Minimal feed

Minimal feeding with grains,

farm and home residues
Feeding by complete diet pellets
Night time or emergency
aerators, 15 hp/ha
24 h aeration >20 hp/ha,
completely mixed

<2000

Limits of primary production,

food chain efficiency
Early morning oxygen
Sludge accumulation,
anaerobic pond bottom
Water quality control

Fed ponds
Night time aeration
Intensive mixed aerated ponds

4. There is a demand for quality control and

transparency, that are difficult to achieve in
extensive systems.
5. Feed utilization may be higher than in conventional
systems. This may be an important point.
6. In cases where production is close to the market,
space limitation is also of concern.
7. Intensification enables easier temperature control.
8. Intensification and automation may save labor.
However, intensification cost money in both capital
investment and operational costs and is not always the
recommended mode of development.
The evolution of pond intensification can be better
seen in perspective by looking at the whole spectrum
of pond intensity, as given in Table 1.
Feed, at large does not limit fish growth once fed
ponds were introduced. The limiting factor in fed
ponds is usually the very low early morning oxygen
concentration. Introducing aeration, though partial
and not covering the whole pond area and volume,
provides enough oxygen to some parts of pond and it is
assumed that oxygen is not a limiting factor any more.
The next limitation becomes the high rate of organic
matter accumulation on the bottom of the pond,
development of anaerobic conditions and production
of toxic metabolites (Avnimelech and Ritvo, 2003),
retarding further intensification. This was overcome
by thoroughly mixing the pond and aerating it 24 h/
day, enabling to raise yields to levels not imagined
before.
Fish (and shrimp) can be grown at very high density
in aeratedmixed ponds. However, with the increased
biomass, water quality becomes the limiting factor,
due to the accumulation of toxic metabolites, the most
notorious of which are ammonia and nitrite. To utilize

20004000
400010,000
20,000100,000

the potentials of aeratedmixed ponds, water quality

has to be controlled.
Three different approaches were used to control
water quality:
(a) Replace pond water with fresh water, usually at
high exchange rates of over five times a day. This
option, though, is in contrast to environmental
constrains, bio-security and water scarcity considerations.
(b) Recycle the water through an external unit
(biofilter) that treat and purify the water.
(c) Treat water quality within the pond system, using
algae (partitioned aquaculture ponds) or bacterial
communities (e.g. active suspension ponds, ASP).
The use of external bio-filters was practiced
successfully for years, in hatcheries, nurseries,
ornamental fish culturing and to some extent in
culturing of commodity fish. These systems are
operative, well tested, proven and can be obtained
commercially. However, they are quite costly, both in
investment and in operation. As a demonstration, we
can compare municipal waste water treatment plants
to required bio-filters. Assuming average COD in raw
municipal waste water to be 600 mg/l and waste water
production of 300 l/cap day, we get a COD release of
180 g/cap day. A town of 10,000 inhabitant has to treat
1800 kg COD/day. In fish farms, feed application is
about 20 kg feed day per ton fish. More than half of it
is released to the water, i.e. at least 10 kg COD/
ton day. A fish farm holding 180 ton of fish emit about
the same load as the 10,000 inhabitant town. Moreover, the standards and demands for fish water
treatment systems are higher than those for waste
water treatment. The last ones releases treated water

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Y. Avnimelech / Aquacultural Engineering 34 (2006) 172178

having more than 10 mg TAN/l, while in fish farming,

less than 1 mg/l is demanded.
An additional basic feature of the biofilter
approach is the rapid removal of feed residues.
According the classical biofilter design parameters,
one removes as fast as possible any un-used feed or
feed residue, in contrast with the in pond methods,
thriving to recycle the non-utilized feed as much as
possible. Feed cost is the biggest component in the
cost of producing fish in intensive systems and is
typically, for intensive ponds, in the range of 2040%
of total production costs (e.g. Losordo and Westerman, 1994; Van Wik, 2001).
Fish nutrition in natural ecosystems or extensive
ponds depends mostly on the natural food web.
Moreover, feed materials are naturally recycled in
those systems. With intensification, the percentage of
added feed as compared to natural productivity is
rising, up to a total dependence on added feed. With
the immediate disposal of un-utilized feed materials,
recycling within the food web is reduced to practically
zero.
Much work was done during the last decades in
order to raise the efficiency of the water quality
treatment systems (e.g. Wheaton et al., 1994; Hadas
and Mozes, 2004) and to raise energy efficiency and
oxygen uptake efficiency (e.g. Watten, 1994). Not
enough attention was paid toward increased feed
utilization alone or in tandem with bio-filtration.
One example of combining water treatment with
feed recycling in intensive ponds is the development
of active suspension ponds, ASP (Avnimelech et al.,
1994; Avnimelech, 2003; Chamberlain and Hopkins,
1994; Burford et al., 2003).
Intrinsic features of any intensive pond are the high
aeration rates and thorough mixing. These features,
obtained as existing features of intensive ponds, are the
ones that we find in almost all biotechnological
industries, as features maximizing the activity of
micro-organisms. An additional characteristic encouraging microbial dominance in zero or limited exchange
intensive ponds is the accumulation of organic
substrates. The organic residues serve as growth
substrates for bacteria, leading to a transition of the
pond to a more and more heterotrophic dominanace.
Achieving high heterotrophic biomass and providing
optimal conditions toward their activity is an intrinsic
trait of intensive ponds with limited water exchange.

The presence of active microbial consortia opens a

number of means to control water quality and to
optimize feed utilization. Unlike algae, microbial
population is very stable and active independent of
light conditions. The metabolism of the organic
residues in densely populated, aerated and mixed
ponds is fast. Microbial breakdown of organic matter
leads to the production of new bacterial cell material,
amounting to 4060% of the metabolized organic
matter (Avnimelech, 1999). Nitrogen is needed to
produce the protein rich microbial cells. Inorganic
nitrogen is immobilized when the metabolized organic
substrate has a high C/N ratio. Adding carbonaceous
substrate, or the equivalent feeding with a low protein
feed, leads to the diminution of ammonium and other
inorganic nitrogen species in the water. Quantitative
treatment of the above mentioned processes was
described by Avnimelech (1999). A point worth adding
is that the conversion of ammonium to microbial
protein, as such, does not consume oxygen, as compared to the high oxygen demand of nitrification, the
alternative mechanism needed to remove ammonium.
A proper manipulation of the microbial biomass
enables to control water quality, mostly through the
conversion of the potentially toxic inorganic nitrogen
species to microbial protein. In turn, the microbial
protein may be utilized to feed the fish.
The ability of tilapia to harvest and utilize the
microbial biomass was demonstrated by using 13C
enriched cellulose, metabolized by bacteria and
eventually found to enrich fish tissues (Avnimelech
et al., 1989). The uptake and utilization of microbial
flocs by shrimp was evaluated using N15 tagged flocs
(Burford et al., 2004) The proportion of daily nitrogen
uptake of the shrimp contributed by the natural biota
was calculated to be 1829%.
An intrinsic problem in intensive ponds is the
nitrogen syndrome. Inorganic nitrogen accumulates in
the pond due to several reasons. Fish metabolize
proteins as an energy source (Hepher, 1988). Fish or
shrimp accumulate about 2025% of protein fed in their
body. The rest is released to the pond as ammonium and
organic nitrogen (Boyd and Tucker, 1998). Protein
utilization in active suspension ponds is almost
doubled, due to a recycling of the excreted nitrogen
into utilizable microbial protein. Avnimelech et al.
(1994) found that protein recovery by tilapia cultured in
ASP rises from 23% in the control to 43% in ASP

Y. Avnimelech / Aquacultural Engineering 34 (2006) 172178

treatment. McIntosh reported on very similar recoveries

by shrimp (McIntosh, 2000). It is likely that protein
utilization can be further raised, as indicated by a 63%
nitrogen recovery by shrimp PL growing in an
experimental static water microcosm tanks (Velasco
et al., 1998). The possibility that grazing of flocs by
tilapia is independent of feeding was demonstrated in a
recent study (Avnimelech, un-published). This may be a
very important conclusion as to the importance of flocs
contribution to fish and shrimp culture.
Protein is a costly component of fish feed. In
addition, there is an environmental concern regarding
over-fishing to obtain fish meal based protein. Thus, the
increased utilization of protein and the resulting lower
protein percentage in the feed has major economical
and environmental implications. Avnimelech et al.
(1994) found that feed expenses in ASP, with 20%
protein in the feed as compared with the conventional
30% led to a lowering of feed expenses from US$ 0.85
per kg harvested tilapia to an average of $ 0.56/kg in
conventional and ASP systems, respectively. Similar
results were reported by McIntosh (2001). The feed cost
in a commercial tilapia farm in California was reduced
by $ 0.2/kg fish due to the transition from 30 to 20%
protein (personal communication).

175

Un-utilized feed and feed components are discarded

in conventional bio-filtered ponds, soon after feed
application. Feed residues have a long hydraulic
retention in ASP. Food web recycling enable a better
utilization of feed. Avnimelech et al. (1994) assumed
that feed application in ASP can be 20% lower that
ponds with a high water exchange rate. Though not
substantiated, yields were not lower than those of
conventional ponds. It was demonstrated (Panjaitan,
2004) that the feed requirement in ASP shrimp tanks
was reduced to about 70% of that needed in open
systems where feed is not recycled and the non-eaten
portion is wasted. It was observed that fish in ASP tilapia
pond (pond having flocs volume of 2030 ml/l), were
not jumping at the feed as fish in conventional ponds,
though they grew better (Avnimelech, un-published).
It seems that this is due to the fact that the fish were
feeding continuously in between meals. This observation can be substantiate by the work of Tacon et al.
(2002) finding that the digestive tract of shrimp growing
in ASP were full with detritus in-between meals.
A large fraction, around 50% of the total TSS
(Avnimelech, un-published), of the organic suspended
matter in ponds is found in flocs measuring fractions of
a mm and higher (Fig. 1), made of bacteria, algae,

Fig. 1. Flocs in water of tilapia ASP. Floc volume of 30 ml/l, TSS 400 mg/l.

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Y. Avnimelech / Aquacultural Engineering 34 (2006) 172178

Fig. 2. Epifluorescence microscope photo of floc from a shrimp ASP, stained with acridine orange. Courtesy of Michele Burford.

inorganic particles and grazing animals, such as

protozoa and zoplankton. The ecology of the flocs is
intriguing and interesting. First, the flocs serve as a
niche containing a highly enriched environment and
probably a site responsible to very active series of
organic matter transformations. Another interesting and
probably very significant feature of the flocs environment is their open structure. As seen in elecromicrographs of flocs (Fig. 2, courtesy of Michelle
Burford, Avnimelech et al., 1982), the floc is made of a
very open, loose and probably very permeable structure. It seems that unlike the situation in densly packed
biofilms, where the oxygen uptake by heterotrophs may
prevent nitrification (Zhang et al., 1995; Malone, 2003),
both intensive heterotrophic activity and nitrification
can take place simultaneously in the flocs.
Works done in the Oceanic Institute demonstrated
that the quality of microbial based food is high.
Essential amino acid as well as other essential feed
components were found in the flocs at ample levels
(Tacon et al., 2002; Decamp et al., 2003). Microbial
flocs contained vitamins and trace metals at levels
enabling to omit the addition of these growth factors to
the feed and thus save about 30% of feed cost.

ASP systems have some limitations. An excessive

turbidity may have a negative effect on different fish
species, the sensitivity of which may differ. Excessive
sludge draining is a mean to control turbidity. Weekly
drainage was practiced in Belize aquaculture for
shrimp ponds (McIntosh, 2001) and is practiced daily
of even a few times a day in tilapia ponds (having
typically a load 10 and more times as compared to
shrimp ponds) It is not obvious that all cultured fish
species are adaptable to growth in turbid water. ASP
require a higher oxygenation as compared to clear
water ponds, though, about 50% of the additional
oxygen needed for the microbial metabolism is offset
by the omission of the oxygen requirement for
nitrification. In addition, pumping is hardly needed
in these ponds. The energy needed for pumping in biofiltered ponds is about the same as that needed for
aeration (Losordo and Westerman, 1994).
It is possible that the design of ASP systems can be
modified to be made of two compartments, one mainly
for fish culture and the second dedicated to the
microbial processes and to a controlled release of
microbial protein back into the fish compartment.
Better turbidity control and higher oxygen transfer

Y. Avnimelech / Aquacultural Engineering 34 (2006) 172178

efficiency to the microbial compartment are anticipated. Research toward such concept is presently
under-taken in the Wageningen University.
A different approach to the design of intensive
systems conserving energy and utilizing feed is
demonstrated in partitioned aquaculture ponds (Brune
et al., 2003). A very intensive fish compartment is
releasing nutrients to an algal compartment that is
assimilating the nutrients and is supplying organic
matter to feed fish (tilapia) that live in the algal
compartment and in a way supply feed to the fish
culturing compartment.
A different approach where maximal feed utilization is considered is the different modes of integrated
aquaculture systems, from the Chinese systems
combining fish culture with duck, chicken and
eventually garden crops to newly developed systems
where the effluents from fish ponds are used to feed
mollusks and macro algae (e.g. Neori et al., 2004).

1. Conclusions
There is no single technology of profitably growing
fish or shrimp. Different technologies have their pros
and cons and different technologies suit different sets
of conditions. Most of presently existing intensive
culture systems are not designed to efficiently use
feed, or feed components that are not immediately
harvested and ingested by the fish. Most of the feed
components are not utilized and their disposal is an
appreciable effort and expense. A number of systems
enable intensive fish culturing in tandem with an
efficient utilization of feed components. Active
suspension ponds (ASP), partitioned aquaculture
and integrated aquaculture are among those. Due to
the high cost of feed, an inclusion of feed utilization is
feasible and is needed in future development of
intensive fish culture systems.

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