USE OF INSECT BASED MEALS IN AQUACULTURE.

From the past few years, there is rapid growth in aquaculture. It is definitely agreed that global aquaculture production will continue to increase. So, nutrition and aqua feed plays an important role in sustainable aquaculture. Fish meal an ideal ingredient in aquatic and terrestrial animal feeds, which assure the best growth, survival and reproduction. However there are many key challenges and some issues related in aquatic animal nutrition and feeding such as availability of feed resources, cost, increasing competition related to agriculture and live stock, market supply, quality and sustainability of aquaculture systems. Aqua feed is biggest source of nutrient loading in fish and shrimp aquaculture production so, it is also important to understand its impact to improve the environment effects, which is essential for sustainable aquaculture so, the environment impacts on aqua feed can be reduced by feeding fish with more environment friendly diets developing better feeding strategies and feed cost reduction. Aquaculture species has been fed with fish meal, plant based feed, and animal based diet as well as oil from fish and plants. Due to increasing prices of fish meal and oil, more plant based material from legumes, oil seeds or cereal gluten has been used in the feed. But, it is difficult to substitute large amount of fish meal and fish oil with plant based material. For this reason, insect meal could be beneficial and could replace in fish meal or plant content. An alternative to fish meal and soya bean have found in insect meal. Insects generally consist of 40 to 60% protein. Insect's meal can replace fish meal and plant based ingredient in feed. Insects require less space and utilize less energy for cultivation. Insect meal can be mixed with other feed components to form a mixture of balanced composition, and then pressed in pellets for better and convenient feeding to cultured species.This paper reviews about the insects in fish feed, digestibility, taste, nutritional composition and quality, production technologies, advantages, disadvantages, potential constraints, ethical issues and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]