Journal article
Effects of water flow rate on growth rate, mortality and biomass return of abalone in slab tanks
M Wassnig, RD Roberts, A Krsinich, RW Day
Aquaculture Research | Published : 2010
Abstract
The capital-intensive nature of land-based abalone farming demands that infrastructure be fully utilized. This study investigated whether the negative impact of high stocking density in shallow raceway tanks could be ameliorated by optimizing water flow. We quantified the effect of flow rate (87-246 L min-1) on the performance of 2-year-old hybrid abalone (Haliotis laevigata and Haliotis rubra) held at two stocking densities (11400 and 7600 tank-1). A 50% higher density yielded a 27% increase in biomass gain, despite a 10% growth reduction and 3% higher mortality. At the lower density, there was an optimal flow rate of approximately 200 L-1, at which biomass gain was 474 kg and the feed conv..
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Funding Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank management at GSW for their support during the study and their permission to publish the findings. The authors would also like to thank the staff at GSW and several students, namely Athol Whitten, Celia Hooper and Luke McAvaney, from the Department of Zoology at the University of Melbourne, for their assistance in setting up the experiment and gathering data.