APPLICATION OF FEEDING MACHINES IN EPINEPHELINAE GROUPERS GROW-OUT CULTURE: A BRIEF OVERVIEW

Epinephelinae groupers are an important aquaculture species in many countries, especially in Asia. However, high feed cost has been commonly known to be a major constraint in groupers production. Appropriate feeding management is an important strategy to reduce the feed cost in grouper farming by minimising feed waste. Nevertheless, requirements by groupers juveniles such as daily feeding, frequent feeding, appropriate food ration estimation, and feeding beyond the routine working hours of the human to suit the fish feeding rhythm are hard to achieve through conventional manual hand-feeding by labour. Therefore, machine feeding is necessary for groupers grow-out farming. This study provided an overview of the applications of machine feeders in groupers grow-out culture. The applicability of this practice and future research for the way forward to improve the currently available machine feeding systems in groupers cultures were also discussed.