Abstract
Effluents from brown coal mines are frequently rich in iron, the water being red-brown in colour and turbid. For several years a fish farm in the Lusatia (Brandenburg, Germany) has used such mine effluents for rearing rainbow trout. The total iron content of this water varies between 5 and 10 mg/l with pH ranging from 6.7 to 7.4. Water turbidity is high with a transparency of 10 to 40 cm at the most due to the substantial ferric hydroxide concentrations. Until 1989 trout have been reared in net cages within concrete settling basins destined for settling the ferric hydroxide mud. The cages were stocked with fingerlings in autumn, reaching portion size in the spring of the following year. Specific growth rate was 0.98% per day, comparable to that of trout in another farm unpolluted by iron but stocked at higher densities. The results show that fingerling rainbow trout may live in water containing more than 5 mg/l total iron but in the absence of Fe2+. These concentrations of water-borne iron seem to have only a limited detrimental effect on fish growth and feed conversion and do not prevent trout culture in principle.
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