Aquaculture is the fastest growing sector in agriculture in the past five decades, and plays an important role in food security for human beings. Sustainable development is the challenge for aquaculture industry at present and in the future, and technological innovations are needed to solve the problems limiting sustainability of aquaculture.
In 1970s, the manner of aquaculture farming was converted from the extensive aquaculture or semi-intensive aquaculture to the intensive aquaculture due to innovation and application of formulated aquafeed and electronic aerator. However, fast expansion of fed aquaculture worldwide resulted in deficiency of dietary protein sources (e.g. fish meal) and serious environmental eutrophfication. From 1980s to 2000s, western scientists or aquaculture companies proposed several novel concepts, techniques or equipment, including recirculating aquaculture system (RAS), partitioned aquaculture system (PAS), in pond raceway system (IPRS), biofloc technique (BFT) and integrated multiple-trophic aquaculture (IMTA), to reduce aquaculture pollution. In 1997, we defined the concept “aquaculture mode (AM)” and proposed to establish sustainable aquaculture industry by planning regional aquaculture industry reasonably and using the optimized AM in aquaculture farming. Compared with RAS, PAS, IPRS, BFT and IMTA, an AM integrates all the aspects of aquaculture farming, including stockment, feed and feeding management, environmental management and health management, therefore, can be used to guide aquaculture management in a fish farm directly. In the past two decades, we optimized stockment, feed and feeding management and environmental management for pond culture of freshwater peral mussel and pond culture of largemouth bass, respectively. The optimized AM have been used in commercial farming of freshwater pearl mussel and largemouth bass in earth ponds. Here, we briefly introduce the concept and method for AM optimization as well as the practices in optimizing the AM for freshwater pearl mussel and largemouth bass farming. We recommend AM optimization as a strategy for improving sustainability and ecosystem services of aquaculture in the world.