Vertical Lift Incubator.
![Picture](/uploads/1/3/1/1/13116492/6069758.jpg)
The Vertical Lift Incubator, or better known as the "seesaw" is a project that I worked on for four summers in conjunction with my bosses, Les Torrans and Brian Ott, at the USDA Catfish Genetics Unit. It is a hatching system for catfish spawn (eggs) that lifts them completely out of the water and then submerges them back again. This allows for eggs to get more oxygen while maturing allowing for a greater hatch rate while using less resources and material. Each basket has four compartments which hold a certain amount of fry bundles. There are three baskets per trough and four troughs per system. After four years of tests in an established Catfish Hatchery, we found that each individual trough could hold at least 60 pounds of fry with a hatch rate in the ninetieth percentile. The old system, which has six baskets per trough and the eggs stay submerged during their entire duration can only hold 15-25 pounds per trough with a hatch rate in the eightieth percentile.
After my last summer of testing, I was asked to come back during the winter to draft working drawings of the seesaw for future publication for the Southern Regional Aquaculture Center to allow this system to spread throughout the fishing industry. Although my bosses were the ones who actually created and designed the system, I spent my summers making the baskets, testing the seesaw's efficiency, reliability, and limits it could have within the Catfish industry. With this system, it is believed that the costs of raising catfish fry could be cut down tremendously. It is still in the process of being published. Below, you can find the pdf of my drawings and the estimated costs of all materials.
After my last summer of testing, I was asked to come back during the winter to draft working drawings of the seesaw for future publication for the Southern Regional Aquaculture Center to allow this system to spread throughout the fishing industry. Although my bosses were the ones who actually created and designed the system, I spent my summers making the baskets, testing the seesaw's efficiency, reliability, and limits it could have within the Catfish industry. With this system, it is believed that the costs of raising catfish fry could be cut down tremendously. It is still in the process of being published. Below, you can find the pdf of my drawings and the estimated costs of all materials.
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seesaw_2011.pdf | |
File Size: | 904 kb |
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see_saw_dimensions.pdf | |
File Size: | 75 kb |
File Type: |