Waste and particle management in a commercial, partially recirculating trout farm

In consequence, the farm configuration can be recommended as an effective possibility for intensive trout production at sites with a small freshwater source and stringent effluent thresholds, even with the unexpected low treatment efficiencies measured for the microscreens. Both drum filters showed relative low treatment efficiencies of 33-53% for total suspended solids, respectively, while an efficiency of 70% should be expected from the measured PSD. With this impact, the farm still emitted a low nutrient amount, especially due to the highly effective offline microscreen backwash sludge treatment, where the SSF wetland efficiently reduced dissolved and particulate nutrients as nitrite (NO2-N), nitrate (NO3-N) and TSS. Thus this SSF wetland application might be suitable as a denitrification step in a closed recirculating trout farm.