Our innovations began with the idea of treating animal food with probiotics and other natural supplements to control disease, enhance reproduction, prolong life, and enhance appearance. Probiotics are live microorganisms that supplement the animal’s natural immune system without costly chemicals and antibiotics which enhance the growth of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. In addition to achieving superior health results in pets, breeding animals and domestically raised food, probiotics delivered as part of the animal’s daily food, are less expensive than the use of drugs and chemicals. This quality of enhanced health, reproduction and longevity gives animal’s additional value as pets and breeders. Many consumers of poultry and seafood are eager to purchase foods raised free of chemicals and antibiotics which contaminate the animal and impact human health. We currently have patents pending on prebiotic and probiotic blends including other super-foods and natural color enhancing delivery systems for animals.
Our first objective was to build an aquarium grade feed for the hobbyists. We accomplished this by developing our patent pending formula Benereef. Our blend of renewable protein will tackle one of the largest obstacles facing the industry currently, renewable feed sources. We feel that not only can we build healthier feed sources that contain probiotics without additional application but we want to reduce the percentages of nonrenewable salmon and fish meal being used as base proteins within nearly all feed options. We have tentative testing agreements here in the US as well as FDA support in sales in foreign markets. Fish which have been fed our food in testing show significant increase in overall health and color.
While testing and developing our first product, we noticed a significant decrease in algal growth in our customers’ tanks. Using this observation, we began testing other aquariums including the new SeaQuest (SQ) aquarium in Layton Utah. SQ had high levels of Cyanobacteria grow in the newly setup shark tanks. Within a few days of treating with Benereef, the Cyanobacteria were under control and the tanks ready for livestock. This observation greatly exceeded expectations and previous experience with standard tank startup treatment protocols.
We took an opportunity to work with our partners at Richards Industrial Microbiology Laboratories, INC (RIMLAB) to explore the effects of our products on a current Cyanobacteria algal bloom at Utah Lake. In the control tanks the high concentration of Cyanobacteria supersaturated the water with oxygen. Benereef by itself or with the addition of yeast extract did not give significant reduction of oxygen, but did reduce turbidity. Probiotic bacteria reduced both the turbidity and algal growth within two days. These tanks were without coral or fish and thus lacked the dynamics associated with normal aquariums where the fish consume Benereef. Coral reefs are known to produce nutrients that simulate specific probiotic bacteria. These bacteria convert toxic waste products, such as ammonia, into microbial proteins. The coral then use the high population of microbes as a food source. Had coral or other animals been present in the tanks, a more nearly normal effect of Benereef may have been observed.
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