Abstract
The Precision Fish Farming (PFF) approach was applied to the estimation of fish oxygen consumption of rainbow trout in a raceway farm. A dynamic model, simulating the evolution of Dissolved Oxygen concentration, was identified: the daily oscillation of fish oxygen consumption rate was simulated by means of a sinusoidal function. The model was applied to the data set collected during a four-week field study, which was carried out in July 2019. Water temperature and Dissolved Oxygen concentration were measured with an hourly frequency in farm influent and effluent. Fish biomass was monitored on a daily basis by combining the data provided by a state-of-the art system for non-invasive estimation of fish weight distribution with mortality counting. The monitoring period was partitioned into two time-windows, as fish was not fed during the first two weeks. These windows were further partitioned into a calibration and validation set. Three model parameters, i.e. the average daily respiration rate, the amplitude of its daily oscillation, and its phase were estimated by fitting the model output to the time series of DO concentration in the effluent. The results of the calibration show that: 1) the daily average oxygen consumption rate is consistent with the literature; 2) the amplitude of the daily oscillation when fish is regularly fed is more than twice that estimated for fasting fish. The results of the validation suggest that the model could be used to implement a cost-effective automatic control of oxygen supply, based on the short-term prediction of oxygen demand.
Highlights
Dissolved oxygen (DO) is a fundamental parameter of intensive aquaculture: its concentration plays a key role in fish metabolism and can interact with other processes, such as bacterial activities or plankton metabolism, that may have a significant influence on its regulation (Lanari, 2007)
This paper aims at filling this gap by proposing a fully dynamic approach to the estimation of fish oxygen consumption, which repre sents the first attempt at applying the Precision Fish Farming (PFF) framework (Fore et al, 2018) to rainbow trout farming
The results presented in this study indicate that the Precision Fish Farming approach can be effectively implemented in raceway trout farms and improve the management of DO supply, which represents one of the main cost items, after feeding and labour
Summary
Dissolved oxygen (DO) is a fundamental parameter of intensive aquaculture: its concentration plays a key role in fish metabolism and can interact with other processes, such as bacterial activities or plankton metabolism, that may have a significant influence on its regulation (Lanari, 2007). DO is the one of the main cost items in trout farming: optimizing oxygen supply is of key importance in improving both profits and fish welfare. The application of the result of laboratory studies to largescale, fully operational farms is not straightforward and, in some instances, can be misleading (Colt and Maynard, 2019). In this regard, a set of methodologies for accurate DO consumption in a fish farm as well as of the rates of other by-product of fish metabolism was proposed and thoroughly discussed in (Colt and Maynard, 2019). This paper focused on the design of a raceway system, and, on setting safety boundaries for the oxygenation capacity (Colt and Orwicz, 1991)
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