Intensive culture of eels in Europe 2/2

The intensive eel culture farms are aiming to produce 80 to 100 tons of eels for each employee. in order to reach economic balance.
This means a high degree of automatisation, automatic graders (see picture), automatic feeding, computerized management and high efficiency self cleaning tanks

The glass eel are fed with cod roe during the first weeks of culture. It is gradually replaced with dry food, and only dry pellets are fed to the eels during the rest of the production process.
Water temperature is maintained constant around 24°C.
The pH kept below 7 (and even as low as 4.5 in some farms).
Oxygen has to be maintained above 3 mg/l in all parts of the tank, and the inflow is often
reaching 300% saturation.
The plant is kept in penumbra, quiet conditions, in order to avoid stress to the fish.
Water is recirculated via mechanical filter and biofilters, in order to remove dirt particles and waste products.
Other purification's and cleanings units, such as ultra-violet sterilisation, denitrification, settling tanks, … can also be included in the filtering process.

In intensive, recirculated systems, the eels do not reach the same sizes as in natural waters. The main size produced is 7-8 pieces per kilo. These are mainly sold to the Dutch market, and turned into « paling » after smoking.
The bigger sizes are going to Germany, also for smoking, and some are transformed into kabayaki (see picture) in two Danish plants and exported to Japan.

Glass eel plant at Lyksvad, Denmark.
The farmers need 3 kilo of glass eels to produce one ton of marketable size eels.

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