The goal of this planned research is to develop an effluent treatment strategy that will satisfy regulatory compliance requirements and not greatly alter production techniques, or impose unreasonable financial burdens on the aquaculture operation. The constructed wetland to be used in this study is located on the UAPB Lonoke farm. Nine wetland cells are to be constructed to evaluate the efficiency of various vegetations and hydraulic strategies in reducing concentrations of selected water quality variables of pond water effluent. The trend in the development of pond aquaculture has been towards increasing production, reducing labor, greater monitoring and control to better production reliability and consistency. Economic and environmental forces driving these changes are likely to intensify forcing future pond aquaculture systems to be redesigned into more controllable and cost efficient production units.
Feed is a major expense of pond production costs.
The research objective is to utilize hydroacoustics for in-pond stock assessment and adjusting of the feed ration to minimizing feed waste. The echo received correlates to the biomass in the acoustic receiving area. This correlation may be used to determine inventory and adjust the feed ration amounts.