Aquaculture

Fibreglass is currently the sought-after solution throughout Southern Africa for farming shellfish, oysters, abalone, tilapia, and all varieties of fish rearing and farming on land. Due to its cost, durability and efficiency fibreglass tanks are also the most commonly used in RAS aquaculture or aquaponics globally. Fibreglass Projects manufacture fibreglass tanks for fish farming for large scale fish farming operations in South Africa and can deliver throughout Southern Africa.

Fibreglass Projects has manufactured hundreds of tanks and containers for onshore aquaculture. Every project is unique and Fibreglass Projects corroborates with each client to design and build a product that suits their specific purposes. From hatcheries or nursery applications to recirculating systems, grow-out, holding or purging tanks.

Beyond tanks for fish farming, Fibreglass Projects extend to tanks for aquaculture research projects for Universities.

Aquaponics tanks, planters and grow-beds are also ideally manufactured from Fibreglass.

The benefits of fibreglass tanks or containers in fish farming in South Africa is widely understood, but some fisheries are only now having the opportunity to move to fibreglass. Some of the benefits are outlined below:

Concrete tanks are still popular and similar in cost to fibreglass, but with exposure to sea water and earth movements, they will crack over time. Additionally as concrete is a porous product, cleaning the tanks is a lot more time consuming and needs to be more thorough than the quick rinse needed for fibreglass tanks.

While canvas and frame containers are a cheaper initial outlay, the advantages of fibreglass are clear in that fibreglass is significantly more durable, so needs to be replaced less frequently, and is non-porous, so easier and quicker to clean.

Hangana Fisheries (Namibia) – As part of an expansion at their Abalone farm, Fibreglass Projects were requested to manufacture 160 fibreglass Abalone grow-out tanks for Hangana Fisheries. The tanks were built using existing moulds that were modified to the customer’s specifications. These were to improve efficiency in the rearing of the Abalone which in turn reduces farming costs. Importantly, the changes in the design of the moulds also reduced the cost and time of manufacturing of the tanks. As the tanks stand above ground, specific attention had to be given to the fibreglass lay-up materials to ensure the necessary tensile strength and rigidity is achieved to retain the large bodies of water.