Aquaculture

Hatcheries need lots of water as they need to simulate a natural river environment. Flow-through systems rely on diverting large volumes of water from lakes and rivers through fish tanks and out the other end. Depending on size and the location, these are likely to have large water treatment systems at the back end to ensure the water returning to the river is as clean as possible. RAS allows the vast majority of this water (usually a 95% target) to be reused over and over again.

With the volume of water needed, this means huge biofilters for the removal of ammonia with very short retention times, often at sub-optimum temperatures for the process.

The RAS-Right range of products has been specifically developed to satisfy the nitrification and denitrification needs of the Global RAS market.

‘Maintenance dosing’ involves continually dosing RAS biofilters with specifically selected bacteria formulations. This stops sub-optimal combinations of bacteria species developing, ensuring robust nitrification, and avoiding spikes in toxins such as H₂S or contaminants like Geosmin.

‘Steering’ the biofilter ensures that there is always a dominant population of ‘good’ bacteria.

It is also known as ‘bio-augmentation’ or ‘active microbiome management’.

It is common practice in industrial waste water treatment, but Nova Q have pioneered this as an innovative approach to improve water quality in RAS.