Housing research fish

The environment in fish research, is a comprehensive concept that, in addition to water quality, also includes temperature, nutrition, water pipe conditions, personnel competence and dedication for animal care.

Environmental requirements vary from species to species and throughout the life cycle there is a great need for harmonization of the environment the experimental fish are exposed to.

Fish research is performed under different conditions from real farm conditions in the field to controlled conditions in a lab. The need for controlled conditions may go on the cost of representative conditions and external validity. However control of environment conditions is also important to understand which factors that have influenced our results.

Recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS)

The use of systems for recycling water has increased attention for many reasons.

In salmon production, interest in the production of smolt, ie small fish in fresh water, because access to enough water is expected to be a limiting factor in the years ahead.

At the same time, well-functioning recycling systems have the potential to provide the fish with more stable conditions than flow systems where capacity is squeezed. This expectation of more stable environmental conditions with controlled water quality is the main reason for introducing RAS in the production of marine fish, especially in fry production.

Here is a link to a video explaining the principles of a Recirculating aquaculture systems

Fish research facility with contentious water exchange In contrast to the RAS system fresh water can be continuously circulated trough the system. In this case it is important to control the water for two reasons

1. To avoid damage to the fish because water is toxic or outside tolerable range
2. To have control of environment conditions of experimental reasons

In the video on this link it is explained how this can be solved (use the cc in the lower right corner for english subtitles)