Israeli aquaculture as a hull , and in particular the inland fisheries has been exposed to many threat o ver the years. One of the main threats is water quantity, quality and price . Israel a semi-arid country suffers constantly from natural water shortage . In order to deal with this problem, Israel has taken several measures. Increasing the supply of desalinated water by constructing desalination facilities is one of the main measures. Nearly 90% of the desalinated water is produced in seawater desalination facilities and the other 10% come from brackish groundwater . Groundwater water operate typically contain salinity of 10–15 g L−1; those salinities make these concentrates an attractive potential water source for inland aquaculture in Israel and elsewhere. Other advantages include essentially zero water costs, potential cultiva tion of valuable marine species, year round convenient temperature of around 22 °C and very low pathogenic risk.
Information regarding fish cultivation in such concentrates is currently very limited . In the current work we examine the potential of rearing fish in concrete produce form a local desalination facilities. We focus on seabass as a model for salt water fish. The research includes comprehensive chemical analysis of the incoming water, and the rearing water. These test include metal content and, water parameters such as Oxygen, Temperature, PH, Turbidity, Carbon dioxide, Ammonia, etc. Fish growth parameter such as survival, daily growth rate (SGR) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) wera collected during the season.
The brine reservoir (Picture above) was populated in mid April 2020 with 140 gr seabass fishes with 2000 fish per dunam and grown to mid-November to market weight of 450 gr. All growth parameter were the same as the local brackish water protocol (table below).