Aquaculture Ponds
Phenomena related to specific purpose built aquaculture ponds are usually applicable to reservoir/storage dams, effluent/waste dams and any traditional farm dam, whether utilised for personal recreational fishing or experimentation. When evaluating a dam, consideration must incorporate its surrounding environment, particularly the immediate local catchment. Constitutional components of a catchment will inevitably affect the related waterways, compounded by human input.
Water-holding capacity of a soil type is determined by the pore spaces in the soil of less than 0.05 millimetres. “Hence, fine-textured soils tend to have higher water-holding capacities than sandy soils” (Soil Conservation Commission of New South Wales 1991, p. 162). Therefore, particular attention is attributed to grow out ponds ensuring the highest degree of impermeability.
Categorising ponds as a way of measuring farm size, and therefore production potential, requires the use of either surface area or volume. Fish and crayfish stocking density can then be measured in number per hectare or number per cubic metre. As culture ponds are usually measured in hectares (which is generally easier to calculate), animal numbers are measured predominantly in numbers per hectare (10,000 square metres).
Pond culture seems to be more suitable for specific species. Silver perch, for example, after the juvenile stage, seem to perform more favourably in ponds as opposed to tank systems. Crayfish are certainly more suited to pond production. Ponds can also be of any size, though for efficient commercial production some pond sizes are more suitable than others. Grow out ponds have to be harvested, and certainly this procedure must be taken into consideration when designing a farm. Ponds that are too big will become impossible to harvest using nets. Grow out ponds that are too small will be economically unviable due to the large costs associated with earth construction.
