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Comment by cameron_b | Hacker News Reader

As a home aquaponics grower, I am really interested in the opportunity to develop tools that help this industry grow smarter. The impact to open-water fisheries can be undone if the markets can be affected to appreciate farm-raised fish for their quality.

I think there is such an incredible opportunity in the sector, and it probably looks a lot like any of the other sectors that have been augmented by data - gather giant piles of any measurable detail, and hope that after filtering you see a pattern that doesn't depend on your production environment running as many sensors ( or tensors ).

Last Thought: Fish transfer pumps are not only a thing, but one of the best ways to have the whole pond population march past your camera in a lighting environment where you have more control.

https://www.miprcorp.com/fish-pumping/ - just one example with decent pictures

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This is a great comment. You are absolutely right about the data opportunity. The industry is so data sparse right now that even basic measurements at scale would be a step change. We are seeing that firsthand with our customer. They went from sampling a few dozen fish by hand to continuous measurement and the insights are already compounding.

Thank you for the fish pump link. We have looked at pump based systems as a way to create controlled measurement environments. You get consistent lighting, predictable fish orientation, and the fish are already moving through a constrained path. The challenge is you are still dealing with water turbidity, particulates, and bubbles in the flow which can mess with imaging. It is better than open water but not a free pass on the vision problems.

We have also been looking at pescalators which use an Archimedes screw design to lift fish out of the water. Some setups combine this with anesthetization for operations that require handling. The tradeoff is you are adding stress and complexity but you get a much cleaner imaging environment. There is no single right answer here and the best approach depends on the species, life stage, and what you are trying to measure. This is definitely technology that will develop over time as the industry matures.

What species are you working with in your aquaponics setup?

Tilapia, because the grow-out plan is very well documented. I'd happily sacrifice growth rate for a fish with higher "desirability" factor, and perhaps a lower optimal temperature. I previously tried Bluegill and lost them, I think, due to stress from temperature variation. I'd like to try them again or go with Catfish. Catfish are the top species (for food, by weight) produced in the US, and they seem nearly as durable as Tilapia in small systems.

The pescalators sound great. There are so many tools like that where the application specifics ( species, system, life stage ) could make room for a scalpel-precise optimization of some tool, but the benefits would have to come from scale, and there just haven't been many first-movers ( or they keep quiet and defend the moat ) who seem poised to raise the tide for the whole industry. It is very ripe for the work you are doing to help the downstream gains over generations of stocks.

Cheers to you guys!

Tilapia is a great species and the resilience is impressive. We have not started working with tilapia yet but love that it is one of the best species being grown in developing countries due to ability to thrive in warm and turbid water.

> The impact to open-water fisheries can be undone if the markets appreciate farm-raised fish for their quality.

Is not so simple. Marine Aquaculture needs huge amounts of wild fishes to feed the farm fishes. The more aquaculture you have, more pressure on some fisheries. Also less pressure on other, that in fact adds an extra of pressure to the first fisheries. China has increased its fleet in the last decades for that.

All this "fishes are sentient" stuff is toxic for your job. My advice is to avoid it like a plague. This people would be typically unable to keep a carnivore fish alive.

You raise a valid point about feed. It is true that carnivorous species like salmon still have FIFO ratios above 1.0, meaning they consume more wild fish than they produce. That is a real concern for those species.

That said, the feed picture has changed a lot over the past two decades. The overall FIFO ratio for aquaculture dropped from 0.63 in 2000 to around 0.22 to 0.28 by 2017 depending on how you calculate it. Modern feeds are increasingly plant based with soy, barley, and other terrestrial proteins making up the bulk of formulations. Up to 30% of fishmeal now comes from processing byproducts rather than whole wild fish. There is also a lot of work happening on alternative proteins like insect meal, algae, and single cell proteins.

The species matters a lot here. Tilapia, catfish, and carps use very little wild fish in their feed. Salmon and shrimp are the outliers that drive most of the wild fish dependency. We are currently working with trout which sits somewhere in the middle.

On the sentience discussion, I am not going to dismiss people who care about fish welfare. It is a legitimate concern and the science on fish cognition is evolving. Our technology actually reduces stress on fish compared to manual handling which involves netting, anesthesia, and physical manipulation. If people care about welfare then better measurement tools that minimize handling should be part of the solution.

> The species matters a lot. Tilapia, catfish, and carps use very little wild fish in their feed

The big problem with herbivores is that nobody really likes their muddy taste. This market only works if you can raise this fishes for free with organic discards. Sea Aquaculture is a totally different planet.

I'm aware of the inclusion of vegetable proteins on the diet since decades, but is a tricky issue. Too much of them and the fishes don't grow well, and too low and the costs of feeding your fishes raise over the value of your fishes in the market. And you still need to import your food. This is a big point. Unexpected 10% more of tariffs just because the president farted that night, means the death of your company.

A lot of research and development has been conducted in diet plans to have an optimal balance for growth while incorporating alternative protein sources, reducing reliance on wild caught fish for feed.

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