I'm researching IPR's and would like to know if anyone on here has experience with them and could offer any recommendations. The options I am looking at are open pond, floating cages and IPR's.
Southern Regional Aquaculture Center has a very good internet artical on this but I had a few more questions.
Can these be ran in the winter with ice on the pond? Can floating cages be used during the winter? Common sense is telling me no but I thought I would ask in case someone knew of a way to do it.
I know Cecil has used cages to overwinter fish in the pond, and I have too.
Yes I've have experience with cages and I'm using one right now to hold about 100 then to 11 inch yellow perch. Bill Cody has a lot of experience with cages too as do others here like Esshup.
I've overwintered fish in cages just fine and then at other times had issues. I wouldn't recommend it but it can be done.
If you can do a search there are some good threads on cages here.
As far as in pond raceway I've never done it but it looks interesting with airlifts to move the water.
I overwintered YP in a cage last year. No problems at all. Actually, I drilled through almost 7" of ice to get down into the cage, and caught fish out of it in Jan.
What is IPR, not familiar with that acronym? Okay figured it out In-Pond-Raceway.
As a general rule, the larger the perch are in the cage under the ice the more chance of problems. Bigger perch will beat each other up and get some body damage which usually results in fungal growth. I too have overwintered perch in cages froze into the ice. It is important to have them well fed going into late fall so they have ample body fat then they should have few problems under the ice in a cage providing DO is always adequate around the cage. I would first try overwintering with cage froze in the ice with a few perch before using a lot of fish in an overwintered cage. For overwintering, I would not overwinter more than two 8" perch per cubic foot. One 8" fish per cubic foot would survive overwinter better IMO. Practice the method first.
Good to hear it is possible to do cages in the winter, thanks for sharing your experiences. Cecil, I too am intrigued by the air lift pumps. The SRAC article says that IPR's were basically limited to spring fed ponds to create the needed water flows to the raceways. Water pumps were too inefficient to move water through the raceways to be profitable. The development of the air lift pump was a break through that created the needed efficient water flow. Here is the link to the article. Shows how to build one.
http://fisheries.tamu.edu/files/2013/09/SRAC-Publication-No.-170-In-Pond-Raceways.pdf
John,
I've seen that. However you can move even more water more efficienttly if you build "yamabuki' airlifts that are completely out of PVC.
Do a search for yamabuki air lifts. I am running my 1000 gallon aquaponics system with only an air pump with one 1.5 inch yamabuki airlift. The Europeans are moving 15 ft3 of water (66 gpm's) of water with a 10 watt air pump that moves only 20 lpm of air.
John, the guy that grows out my Tilapia to stocking size was one of the first to do large scale IPR's. He produces over 1 million pounds of Hybrid CC annually with a target harvest density of 11,000 pounds of fish per surface acre in southern Alabama. His first full season in raceways, he produced 22,000 pounds per acre. This year, he was up to 30,000 pounds.
He used to give tours, but stopped when the US State Dept began scheduling foreign producers wanting to video the process in order to compete with US growers.