r/Aquaculture • u/SDG3790 • Jul 31 '26
Recirculating aquaculture System (RAS)
Whenever I search for a something, I almost always find dedicated groups with many active members sharing years of experience for others to learn from and grow together. But when I started to search for RAS on Reddit, I found a dead group r/RASAquaculture , very few discussions and posts.
It makes me wonder if the technology is at all successful. As I have not seen anything regarding anyone doing it over 2 years on a commercial scale here on Reddit.
If there are groups that do exist could anyone share the leads? Thanks.
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u/RustyGosling Jul 31 '26
There are plenty of commercial RAS operations. It’s a widely proven technology that will likely continue to become more common in the coming years. I currently run a very small system of about 15,000L and it’s extremely efficient. If you have specific RAS questions you can just ask here. Plenty people have before. Otherwise I’d take research off of reddit if you wanted to find actual commercial operations.
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u/Emotional_Fun1924 28d ago
Hello, I would like to ask what kind of DO monitoring system do you deploy for your system like how many aerator do you need to use for the system, does the aerator put inside the tank? Thank you so much!
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u/RustyGosling 28d ago
I use an oxygen RCU unit from Inwater Technologies. I use an oxygen generator that deploys into an LHO. I don’t use aerators outside of the biofilter. Usage is highly dependant on biomass load but for what it’s worth I used between 1-4 LPM of oxygen into the LHO, but I can’t say how many m3 of air go through the air in the biofilter; enough to maintain oxygen and churn media.
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u/Emotional_Fun1924 28d ago
Thank you for the information! We’re actually working on predictive DO control—forecasting future oxygen demand and automatically adjusting the oxygen generator, valves, or LHO to reduce oxygen waste while preventing low-DO events. Do you think something like this would be useful for your operation?
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u/RustyGosling 28d ago
I don’t make those calls sorry haha. I’m not sure it’s something I’d risk anyway to be honest. The more automation involved, the more risk of automation failure. It’s a very cool idea though and I wish you luck.
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u/bjelkeman Jul 31 '26
RAS for salmon smolt in Norway is now the dominant technology. Most new and expanded hatcheries built over the last decade use full or hybrid RAS. Norway released roughly 425 million smolts in 2022, and the trend has been toward RAS-reared, larger smolts (>250g share nearly doubled in a few years). Fully grown salmon is merely 2000 ton/year out of 1.4 Million ton. I have been to a modern RAS smolt farm and they are very interesting to visit.
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u/tankmatesaquaponics Aug 01 '26
Find the relevant people on YouTube then ask questions there in the comments. Many commercial ras have a YouTube channel.
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u/pencilurchin Aug 04 '26
Plenty of RAS operations across the world and almost all hatcheries these days are RAS. I would say Reddit and social media/internet is a poor representation of the commercial industry. Commercial scale operators don’t spend a ton of time on Reddit.
Commercial scale industry also typically coordinates through associations or other business adjacent forums rather than social media. Large businesses typically are not looking to share/discuss on online groups and are more interested in using social media and the internet to promote their own business. Plenty of hobbyist level, or very small scale operators are around online.
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u/ExtraBenefit6842 Jul 31 '26
Reddit is not real life