Intensive culture of tilapia in aquaponic in Egypt – Video

The video was filmed in December 2014 in an aquaponics project located along Cairo-Alexandria Desert road in Egypt. These grow-out tanks are the component of a larger integrated and aquaponics project.

Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus is the species cultured in this project. The aquaculture component consists of nursery and grow-out concrete tanks. The nursery tanks are rectangular with dimensions of 5.6 m width, 17.5 m length, and 2-m depth. The aeration is provided by air blower. The grow-out tanks have the dimension of 3 m width, 24 m length, and 2.2-meter depth. Aeration is provided by paddle wheel aerators; one 2-hp aerator for each tank. The feed used is commercial pelleted feed starting with 32% protein feed ending with 25% protein. The average production out of the grow-out tanks is 20 kg/m3 with an average size of about 350 g. The cardboard sheets shown in the video are imported and are of a special type that maintains its original shape in the water. These sheets are the biological filter in the present project.

The water is pumped in such closed system passing by the biological filters and reaching the aquaponics components whereas PVC pipes are installed in rows and where several types of vegetables are grown.

Underground water is the only water source. The original salinity of well water is 0.8 gram/liter. Because the water serves horticulture farm cultivated by grapes and mangos, the project installed a desalination station (not shown in the video) to bring the salinity down to 0.2 gram/liter as required by the horticulture trees.

Acknowledgment: I owe the project ownership and a management my sincere thanks for allowing me to visit the operation and post this video. Special thanks to Dr. Sherif Sadek who arranged this visit and for providing me with the technical information related to this project.

 

 

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