82-Uncaster Farming, Saturday, November 18,1989
Fishing For Business
BY LISA RISSER
RICHLAND (Lebanon Co.)
Tucked into a seven-acre nook
between the Millardsville Quarry
Lake and the Tulpehocken Stream
is the kind of place of which every
fisherman dreams. A place where
the trout are always biting, and
there is plenty of fish for everyone.
Unlike most farming opera
tions, Limestone Springs raises not
livestock or crops, but fish. Rain
bow, brown, and brook trout and
cohoe salmon are produced to
stock ponds or rivers, sell to mark
ets or distributors, and 'ffer good
fishing for sportsmen.
Of the 665,000 pounds ot fish
produced annually, mo r • than half
are processed for commeuMal sale,
a quarter goes for live stocking of
ponds, with the remainder going
for fee fishing.
Limestone Springs, which
began in the late 1950 s as a family
owned operation, was purchased
in ’79, after silting idle for about a
year, by a New Jersey power com
pany. The company, interested in
aquaculture, operated it in con
junction with a property in New
ark, N.J. Several years later, the
Richland-based operation was sold
to former employees including
Richard Colantuno, president, and
Jack Kiely, vice president
Raising fish
The fanning cycle begins with a
shipment of “eyed eggs,” which
are fertilized and have begun deve
lopment A freshly fertilized fish
egg is called a green egg.
“We tried to harvest our own
eggs for a year,” said Renee
Swank, vice president of opera
- “We fr nd thr
About 385,000 pounds of fish are processed by the firm.
Within hours of being killed, the trout are on their way to
area restaurants and markets. Here workers debone and fil
let trout. During off season the work is done by hand rather
than by machines.
Vumesffiad
t//o(es
Limestone Springs
time consuming for the volume of
eyed eggs that we need.”
The process also was a bit too
fragile for the company. Once the
eggs are fertilized, they must sit in
incubating trays through which
water flows, and they must remain
untouched until they eye or else the
eggs die. The average time it takes
to eye is about 16 days. Hatching
occurs anywhere from 19 to 80
days depending on the water’s
temperature.
Limestone Springs requires five
shipments of 700,000 eyed eggs
per year. “We need about 1.2 mil
lion green eggs to get the eyed eggs
that we need,” reported Swank.
Hatching small fry
Once the eggs hatch, the half
inch fry (small fish) are kept in the
hatch house, which has about eight
raceways, until they double or
triple in size. Called fingerlings at
this size, the young fish are moved
outside to a series of staggered
raceways.
“We have to keep the fish separ
alecfby size because fish are canni
balistic; the big ones eat small
ones,” said Swank. “Sometimes
you’ll see a couple very big fish in
a raceway, which means they were
missed when the other fish were
moved and a young group was
moved in.”
Fish-eating birds such as blue
herons are a problem for the farm.
Swank estimates that up to 33 per
cent of the small fmgerlings are
lost due to hungry birds. Firecrack
ers and electric wire, similar to that
used to contain livestock, help to
keep birds away.
Trout are kept for about a year,
11 the- 'll 'l5 ‘ '■-hi
length. The smaller fish measuring
I VA to 12 inches are used mainly
for stocking, although the firm will
stock any size fish that the custom
er requests. Twelve- to 13-inch
trout are generally put into the
property’s man-made stream for
fee fishing. The largest fish are
used for processing with the big
'»nerally bei >ld vholf
A rainbow trout
instead of filleted for use in
restaurants.
The youngest fish, those up to
four inches in length, are fed a
commercial feed with 55 percent
protein and 15 percent fat. For old
er fish, the protein amount is
recuded to 38 percent, while the fat
content is reduced to 12 percent.
Some of the feedstuffs included in
the pelletized feed include fish
meal, com distillers, cereal food
fines, soybean meal, brewers dried
yeast, blood meal, kelp, and
assorted minerals and vitamins.
Mature fish eat about one per
cent of their body weight, while
the percentage is larger for smaller
fish. “The fish cat more during
warmer weather,” said Swank. “In
the winter, they go into a dormant
period. They’re almost like a bear
that hibernates.”
The fish in the outside pens are
fed with demand feeders sus
pended above the water. The fish
leant to hit a wire, which moves a
disc inside the feeder that allows a
small amount of pellets to drop at a
time. Amounts are kept small
because the trout aren’t bottom
feeders like catfish and will only
eat feed as it falls through the
water.
Quarry lake provides water
The farm is located in an almost
ideal place for a fish hatchery. The
nearby 27-acre quarry lake pro
vides much of the water necessary
for operation. Via a gravity sys
tem, water flows to a pumping sta
tion where it is sent to the various
raceways. Water is forced through
the pens at up to 400 gallons per
minute to supply oxygen. Addi
tional oxygen is provided by floor
er side-mounted air jets.
“We bring in water at saturation
(the natural amount of oxygen in
the water) and super saturate it by
injecting oxygen,” explained
Swank. “This gives us the capabil
ity of increasing our carrying
capacity by 10 times the normal
rate.”
The additional. oxygen also
helps during feeding time when the
fish are using up a lot of energy.
The hungry fish almost go into a
frenzy of activity.
Water temperature is important
for the fish’s growth. The optimum
temperature for growth is 55 to 58
degrees Fahrenheit.
“An 11- or I VA -inch fish can be
Renee Swank, vice president of operations, displays a
mature trout. Adults are kept for processing or for stocking
the firm’s on-site fishing stream.
raised in 13 months or 16 months,”
stated Swank. “The warmer it is
the faster they grow. Our water
temperatures fluctuate between 42
and 63 degrees because we get it
straight from the lake.”
Fish shipped out of state
The fish arc shipped to New
York, New Jersey, Virginia, and
throughout Pennsylvania. Limes
tone Springs does most of the
trucking because they will only
guarantee those they have shipped.
The trucks have individual tanks
into which up to 250 pounds of fish
are loaded. Oxygen is pumped into
the tanks to keep the fish alive. The
trucks carry a 16-hour oxygen
supply.
Some people question whether
the stocking fish, kept in near-ideal
conditions, will live in their new
homes. “It takes a day at the most
for the fish to reacclimate,” Swank
said. “The hemoglobins go
through a change that allows the
In order to eat, fish In raceways pull on a string sus
pended from a plastic feeder, which causes several pellets
at a time to fall. The feeders are filled in the morning and a
“feeding frenzy” occurs causing the water to ripple as fish
jump to the surface.
fish to live in water containing
fewer parts per million of oxygen.”
The farm has been experiment
ing lately with other varieties of
fish. Presently they have some
cohoe salmon, which fetches a
higher price per pound than trout
In addition. Limestone Springs is
looking for a location in the area
with a good water flow so that they
can expand their operation. The
new location may be used for egg
producing or to raise salihSri.’
The fish that are sold to stores
and distributors are processed in a
former Hershey creamery in Mypr**
stown. The fish are
and filleted soon after beirtg killed.
Hours later the fish, packed in ice,
are trucked to stores, distributors,
and restaurants. Because consum
ers are concerned with nitrate
levels and other pollutant, Lime
stone Springs advertises their fish
as farm produced.