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Re: NFC: Re: Re: Stunted fish growth and breeding
Jake writes:
> On the opposite side of this is the various
> experimental demonstrations of overcrowding in
> confinement rearing using major water changes or
> flowthru systems wherin fish were reared literally
> touching one another. Of course the mortalities from
> wounds was prohibitive but the intentions of the
> research was to explore limiting factors. A famous
> photo of one such study in Germany utilizing German
> Mirror Carp shows ~ 50kilos of carp in less then 100
> litres of water. This is featured in a popular Aqua
> Farming textbook of the '70s.
A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Tom Lasordo at NC
State University. He is head of their aquaculture research program, and is
at the head of the pack for experimental aquaculture techniques.
Aside from maintaining pristine water conditions, Dr. Lasordo was a big
proponent of saturating water with oxygen. He had a number of oxygen tanks
and an oxygen reactor inline with the filter, and by the time the water got
back into the stock tank it was 100% saturated. He was also making
extensive use of mechanical and biological filtration methods. There were a
number of chambers sunken into the ground filled with styrofoam beads as the
biological media that the water would pass through (this was after the
mechanical drum filter was done filtering out solids). There was no odor,
and the water seemed very clean save for the tannins that are released by
the purina fish chow. He was also working on another project where they
were using food made from agriculture waste (corn stalks and such) to avoid
using fish meal and other animal proteins in the feed. Really neat stuff,
and any fish head owes it to themselves to check this facility out (the
"fish barn") if they're ever in the Raleigh/Durham area.
References: