Aqua-business con: How to estimate the quantity of water required in your fish pond

Fish farming does not ending all in constructing ponds, stock fish and harvest, but there are a lot of issue and practice a farmer should continue to consider. In this chapter we shall look on how to estimate the quantity of water required in your fish ponds.

Water tend to play essential role in fish farming that includes:

To fill the ponds
Make up for the evaporation
Drain and refill the ponds
Aeration of the ponds

There are four basic source of water in aquaculture:

River/stream

Pumped up underground water

Lake/dam

Rain water

A farmer should be able to determine the quantity of water available for a given water sources and modified it according to the needs from his or her fish ponds .

This will help in controlling water uses in his or her farm hence prevent water losses and also conflict from community around or water authority.

In estimate the amount of water available from given specific source, the following steps should be taken. An example is added in order to increase farmer understanding on estimating amount of water.

Forexample: Farmer has pond of 100 m²and with depth of 90 cm on upper side and 50 cm on lower side. He want to know amount of water available from his water source (pumped underground water) and amount of water required to fill his pond.

Solution

1. Amount of water available from the source

Take 10 L bucket or any vessel with well know volume, fill it with water at the same time note the time taken to fill that bucket.

* It took 45 sec to fill 10 L bucket

But change it into minute (10 x 60/45) = 13.3 L/min

Therefore, the flow rate of water from the farmer source is 13.3 L/min

2. Amount of water which is required to fill the pond

Pond size = 100 m²

Depth = 50 cm and 70 cm hence average depth is 70 cm

*If 13.3 L = 1 min how about 100 m² ?

100 m²x 0.7 m = 70 m³

Note