Nutrition in ornamental aquaculture: the raise of anthropocentrism in aquaculture?

AbstractOrnamental aquaculture nutrition is profoundly different from conventional aquaculture nutrition from several points of views as the prices, finality and diversity. This paper tries to answer to some simple questions: do modern ornamental fish feeds reflect more physiological fish needs or aquarist expectations? What are the driving forces behind the modern aquarium nutrition? On the light of the considerations made in this paper, it emerges that popularity of ornamental aquaculture is largely influenced by a progressive humanization of ornamental fish. Obesity and longevity transfer is the most evident nutritional effect of pet proximity to humans and this special kind of ‘contagion’ is observable in ornamental fish too. Assuming that aquarium fish have been humanized, ornamental fish industry has taken profit from this. A drastic change happens to fish feeds after crossing the human doorstep. This is probably ignored by humans, but not by ornamental aquafeed companies that sometimes induce erroneous customer expectations to improve their profits. Feeding an ornamental fish in our modern society represents a symbolic action more referred to humans than to fish physiological needs; therefore, human psychology affects the ornamental fish feeds quality much more than the fish physiology. This is the main and illogical conclusion of this paper. This paper tries to enlighten some unexpected relationship between us (humans) and this modern category of domesticated animals: aquarium fish and to give some possible future perspectives.