Hatchery tour

[tjnelson44]

Its been a while since I have posted due to limited internet access and now that I'm back,I thlought I would share some pics of the fish hatchery were I live and work. No cichlids here but I hope you find the pics interesting.

This is a shot of two of the race ways. We use a flow through system so they are always getting fresh water. It allows for high densities of fish. Each one in the picture currently has about 30 thousand rainbow trout that are around 4 to 7 inches long.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y77/tjnelson44/100_0971.jpg

This is a pic of inside the hatchery building were we hatch them out. We start by placing the eggs in tumblers to keep them from fungusing then once they hatch they are moved into the trays. After they grow a bit theyare moved into the blue fiberglass tanks.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y77/tjnelson44/d8c4c81a.jpg

Trevor

Here is a shot of the inside of one of the trays
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y77/tjnelson44/03fb1cc7.jpg

This is inside the feed building. Those stacks of bags are fish food. The little cart has a bin on the back for the food. All you have to do is drive next to the race way and it shoots out a specified weight of food.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y77/tjnelson44/2063385a.jpg

This is one of the stocking trucks. It has two tanks with agitators and O2 injection.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y77/tjnelson44/100_0969.jpg

And this is how we load the stocking truck. This thing sucks the fish out of the raceway sends them into the truck.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y77/tjnelson44/100_0978.jpg

 

[fishgeek]

farming for food?

pretty awesome setup , what sought of market share do you manage in a company like that
is it just the trout?
i assume you are somewhere cooler is the water natural and diverted through your raceway?
any filtering

how about in the hatchery, filterd or natural flow through there too?

andrew

 

[tjnelson44]

It is a state run hatchery. We raise them to provide more coldwater fishing opportunities in the Arizona high country. Farming for food isn't the purpose but most of the fish we stock get caught and eaten. We use flow through in the hatchery bluilding also. We have twelve race ways outside. The first two get the fresh water and it flows from them down to the next pair then the next pair and so on until it is sent to the settling pond to remove suspended waste. Then it is sent right back into the creek. The only form of filtering that we use between the raceways is the tail boxes at the end of each one. These are just the back section of the raceway were a bunch of junk settles due to the path of the current. Twice a week we open and drain and brush them out. We do have a great natural source of water, Canyon Creek out here in the middle of the Tonto National Forest. We pull the water straight from the ground at the springhead. It comes out at 50 degrees F. It hardly changes in temp by the time it gets to the end since its trip though the hatchery is pretty quick. The flow averages around 1800 gallons per minute through the race ways.
Trevor