Abstract
Research into the use of recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) addresses the question of how to achieve profitable production while consistently recycling water and nutrients with minimal fresh water demand and waste production. The RAS facilities require an adequate supply of fingerlings, and a facility for fingerling production in conjunction with each RAS can prevent disease transfer and ensure quality and continuous production. The time, space, and financial investment can be eliminated by hatching (purchased disease free ova) and rearing of fingerlings every 2-3 months. The present study evaluated (water quality assessment, feed utilization, production cycle duration) a simple low cost recirculating hatchery for salmonids as a safe and continuous source of fingerlings for further rearing in RAS. The tested recirculating hatchery enabled low cost efficient production on a small scale (at least 5 production cycles per year, > 63 000 fingerlings per each cycle), low fresh water demand (0.05 l.sec-1) with maintaining good rearing conditions, and environmental and zoohygiene safety. Such simple facilities can support the sustainability of inland aquaculture and strengthen the effort to deliver quality products with minimal operational and environmental costs.
Highlights
The expanding human population requires ever more increasing sources of quality food [1,2]
Water temperature ranged from 9.1-13.9°C throughout the study with a maximum day change of 0.4°C. pH values were 7.1-7.7 throughout the study
The level of organic compounds in water was low during the production cycle, reaching maximum biological oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (CODMn) values of 2.5 and 4.1 mg O2 l-1, respectively
Summary
The expanding human population requires ever more increasing sources of quality food [1,2]. The importance of adequate nutrition is a factor predicting future preferred diet composition, and the role of fish is likely to increase in human diets [2,3,4]. The ongoing over-exploitation of natural fish resources has led to expanded development of marine and freshwater aquaculture in recent decades [1,4,5]. Environmental, and zoo hygienic concerns have led to increased efforts to maximize water reuse and waste management [6,7,8,9] and development of various types of Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS). One of the most important freshwater species reared in RAS is rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss [10,11], having high culinary and nutritional value [12,13,14] obtainable by plant-based diets [15]. Annual worldwide production of rainbow trout reached more than 770 thousand tons in 2011, approximately 40% more than in 2003, with the prospect of further growth [16]
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