A fish jacuzzi
SOLVOX not only increases the efficiency of land-based fish farming to the point where it can compete with open sea fish farming, it also improves living conditions for fish.
The microbubbles move with the water in an ideal circular current. “The water flow exercises the fish, improving their well-being and meat quality while also increasing overall yield. As a positive side-effect, it causes fish faeces and uneaten food pellets to gravitate to the bottom of the tank from where they can be easily removed,” says Linde’s global marketing manager for aquaculture, Hans-Jörg Meissner.
Faeces, uneaten food, but also parasites such as sealice and chemicals used to keep the fish monocultures healthy, are a major issue for the industry today, particularly in open sea fish farming.
By making land-based fish farming more attractive, SOLVOX® OxyStream helps to reduce the pressure open sea farming places on the environment. Farmers in Iceland, for example, are using SOLVOX® OxyStream to reduce the time fish spend in open sea cages to less than one year – from currently 18 months – by growing juvenile fish to a much larger size in tanks. This so-called post-smolt growth on land reduces their exposure time to environmental hazards and decreases the amount of waste material in the open ocean.
Going one step further, SOLVOX also has the potential to support land-based fish farming from egg to full grow-out. While this may seem somewhat unnatural, it helps to satisfy the global demand for healthy fish meat as open sea farms reach their regulatory and environmental limits. In the long run, a purely land-based approach enables fish farmers to run their business close to demand hot-spots, thus reducing transport cost and increasing the availability of fresh sea food.