News & Events
03 September 2007AEG Offers Centralized Water Borne Feeder Technology to Global Aquaculture Industry
ST. ANDREWS, NB - The Aquaculture Engineering Group (St. Andrews, NB) has completed all necessary field trials and computer application programming that is necessary prior to commercial sales of its patent-protected AEG Centralized Water Borne Feeder technology.
“Aquaculture companies operating sites in medium- to high-energy environments cannot take full advantage of the superior water quality due to lost feeding days and sub-optimal feeding practices,” explains Chris Bridger, AEG General Manager. “Feeding fish populations consistently in the same location in the net pen and at the same time of day, every day of the year, will decrease fish stress and allow operators to harvest the stock sooner and therefore make more profit.”
AEG operated its prototype AEG 100T Open Ocean Feeder on a commercial Atlantic salmon site in the Bay of Fundy for the past 1.5 years to complete all necessary field trials. This time allowed actual farm operations while improving the overall system design and debugging onboard computer applications.
AEG Feeders are available as either the Jail Islander mobile barge design for low-energy and small operations or the AEG Open Ocean Feeder for medium- to high-energy sites having greater production scale.
All AEG Centralized Water Borne Feeder models offer numerous economic and management benefits to fish farm operators including:
- Maintenance-free Structure – Marine grade aluminum fabrication reduces structural maintenance costs compared with other possible fabrication materials including steel and concrete.
- Water Borne – In water delivery and spread of pelletized feed over a 3 m diameter decreases feed loss common in air-borne delivery, allows delivery anywhere in the water column for increased species flexibility, and locates feed pipes at depth to protect them from surface wave activity. Additional diffusers can be deployed in large cages for greater spread of delivered feed.
- Optimized Feed Management – Delivery method eliminates feed loss due to pellet breakage associated with traditional surface-based feed delivery systems thereby providing more eco-friendly operations, better food conversion ratios, and associated cost savings.
- Sophisticated – Integration of a sophisticated computer application that allows versatile user-defined feed management, including simultaneous feeding of up to 28 cages over a defined period of time or continuously throughout the day.
- Distance Control – Distance communication and control capability via cellular, satellite, or telemetry. Each AEG Feeder sends scheduled daily emails to summarize cage-specific feed allotments and immediate emails to alert site operators of onboard system alarms for rapid response.
- Social Acceptance – Site noise pollution is drastically reduced by delivering feed in water thereby eliminating noise associated with air delivery methods, distributing feed pellets in the water column thereby eliminating fish “boiling” behaviour and associated noise at the surface, and incorporating residential/hospital grade noise control systems.
About AEG
The Aquaculture Engineering Group Inc. provides professionally engineered equipment and management solutions to the marine aquaculture industry, particularly those operations sited in medium- and high-energy environments. AEG Solutions must meet five sustainability criteria to ensure our product portfolio is: socially acceptable, cost-effective, eco-friendly, professionally engineered, and robust for survival. Our own line of innovative technologies coupled with those provided through strategic business partnerships allows AEG to supply turn-key systems that meet global client needs. For company details, please visit http://www.aeg-solutions.com
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