HOW TO SET UP A FISH HATCHERY BUILDING

It is important that hatchery designs and rearing practices minimize "un-natural" conditions that might impair overall expression of crucial post- release performance traits along with the readiness on the part of the hatchery managers to move away from the traditional Aquaculture practices to the modern practices. A standard hatchery could be designed to have the following;
1. The hatchery building
2. A borehole or Tube well
3. Overhead tanks
4. Outdoor spawning or nursery tanks.

THE HATCHERY BUILDING

The Hatchery building should be a well designed structure made up of laboratories, offices, stores, holding tanks of about 1×2m×1m (w×l×h) concrete tanks or space for big fibreglass tanks of similar sizes, spawning tanks of same dimensions or bigger, Aquaria section where several Aquaria are located, lecture conference room for meetings and conferences.

The holding tanks are tanks where the harvested adults are kept temporarily for breeding purposes. The building should be well electrified and standby generator bought to ensure regular supply of light whenever the main power supply company fails. Also, the entire hatchery complex should have facilities for aeration. A blower if affordable is preferable. In absence of that, a pumps should be provided to help aerate the system.

Present in the stores are facilities and equipments like pestle and mortar for grinding pituitary extracts, glasswares for saline solutions, meter rule and weighing balance, zinc jars for hatching artemia cysts, Knife, Razor blade, plastic bowls for collection of eggs, petri-dishes for collection of eggs, chemicals for anaesthetization and bath treatments, hand nets for catching of brood fish, feathers or plastic spoons for mixing the eggs and sperm, buckets etc.

The laboratory could be for pure culture of plankton or for water quality analysis or for disease diagnosis and treatment.

A BOREHOLE

The borehole is used as water source to feed the entire eco-hatchery unit. This is a must for any hatchery to thrive well. There is need for good water supply to fish juvenile due their very tender nature at this stage. Raising fish juvenile with poor water quality introduces pathogens to the system and this in turn harm the young fish that are still tender. The temperature of the borehole varies between 26.1 to 27.5°C. Due to the poor dissolved oxygen content of borehole water, aeration using air pumps or air blowers help to enhance the oxygen level.

OVERHEAD TANKS

An overhead tank should be provided for storage of water. Water from borehole has low dissolved oxygen. Attempts should be made to increase the DO level by aeration. The overhead tanks are generally of 2000 litres capacity or more. From these tanks, water is continuously fed to the spawning or hatching pool or to the entire hatchery during Hatchery operation.

OUTDOOR SPAWNING AND NURSERY TANKS
Besides the provision of indoor spawning and nursery tanks, outdoor equivalent should also be provided. The outdoor nursery tanks have added advantage of being used to culture plankton and grow bother the larvae and the plankton together. (SEE www.fishclass.icu for more explanation)

In my Hatchery Complex, breeding takes place indoors and the stripped and fertilized eggs are spread evenly on a suitable substrate or on fine nylon in an incubation chamber made up of glass of approximately 200L capacity in two compartments ( light and dark region). The eggs are laid on the substrate or nylon on the light source and immediately the larvae hatches, it swims towards the dark region and are later siphoned using hose pipe into the breeding tray of fibreglass with a capacity of 400L connected to pipe borne water. They are fed, first preferably with live foods for about 10 days and sometimes with artificial feeds of 0.7πg particle size before transferring to the Nursery ponds or outdoor concrete tanks.

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