Wild fish stocks are being rapidly depleted, and mariculture – cultivating marine organisms in a controlled environment – can provide an alternative source of seafood. Worldwide mariculture fish production is rapidly growing, and developing mariculture is one of Croatia's strategic goals. Achieving this goal requires minimizing production costs and environmental impacts of mariculture.

The aim of the UKF project FiMDEB was to create a model relating feeding to fish growth, and use it to investigate how common feeding scenarios could be improved. The model was to be based on Dynamic Energy Budget theory of metabolic organization, which describes how organisms acquire and partition energy. Since fish feed constitutes approximately 50% of operational costs of mariculture, any savings in fish feed can lead to substantial savings in production costs.