There are some key elements that need to be considered before getting started. The first thing that needs to be looked at How Does A Fish Finder Work is the water supply and discharge. You are going to be moving large quantities of water. Where is all the water coming from, a well or some other source? What is the quantity available, are permits required? Then after the water is used, how can it be disposed of, (i.e. sewer system, spray irrigation, storage ponds)? Next, consider the property location. What climate zone is the property in, and how will that affect the species to be raised. For example, you would not want to try and raise a cool water species like yellow perch in a hot zone of the country like Texas. The cost of cooling all that water would greatly affect the business's profitability. A better choice would be red drum, which is a warm water species. What about the market for the given species? Where is this market at, how large of a volume is moved and at what price? Generally, the farther the farm is away from the market the lower the farm price will be. After you have identified your species you need to find a reliable source of fingerlings for grow out or a separate hatchery on site to produce your own. Once you have answered these questions you have to decide what type of aquaculture you would like to do, outside ponds, flow through, or recirculating. Generally speaking, out side ponds safely do 5000 pounds to the acre of water, so a million pound farm would require 200 acres of water or about 300 acres of land. This is a very expensive way to with land cost, the building of levees, large wells, underground plumbing, etc. Flow through systems require some sort of containment in conjunction with very large pumps to move the water. The water also need to be enriched with liquid oxygen. This is a very expensive system to operate costing well over a dollar per pound of fish to produce. Recirculating systems have the lowest capital cost of the three. They also have the lowest operational cost. The same one million pounds of fish can be raised in a one-acre building. They also require less water. The same one million pounds of fish per year in a pond system would use 264 million gallons, in a flow through system it would use twelve million gallons, a recirculation system would use seven million gallons per year. Recirculation systems are the greenest and most profitable way to produce fish.

Rick Sheriff is the president and founder of Opposing Flows Technology, which provides turn key Aquaculture Farms as well as aquaculture tanks