Making the Grade
600,000 incubating tilapia eggs
AmeriCulture produces up to 400,000 Nile tilapia fry per week. Our eggs are carefully incubated and hatched in our nursery. Over the course of their first month, fry and fingerlings are graded and selected a minimum of three times to insure that only the highest performing fingerlings reach our customers. Our precision grading methods create highly uniform sizes ranging from a half gram to one and a half grams. In addition to these graded sizes, larger fingerlings and stockers are available as well. Please call or message us if you need larger fish.
Unparalleled Growth Rates
The vast majority of fingerling suppliers rely upon highly inbred stock that display modest to poor growth rates. Due to the legacy of the NATI pedigree-based genetics program, AmeriCulture has realized incremental gains in growth rates averaging 6% per generation. As a result, our tilapia display unparalleled industry growth rates and uniformity due to superior genetics. In our first twenty years of business, virtually 100% of our sales have been the result of the word-of-mouth advertising of our satisfied growers. Our fingerlings literally sell themselves.
Disease Free...Actually Disease Free
Our health inspections are performed by the USDA-accredited aquatic diagnostic laboratory, the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory (WADDL) at Washington State University and date back to our inception. The rigorous “Blue Book” protocol is applied to the detection of various harmful bacteria, viruses, and parasites including epizootic hematopoietic necrosis virus, infections hematopoietic necrosis virus, infectious pancreatic necrosis virus, Oncorhynchus masou virus, spring viremia of carp, viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus, Aeromonas salmonicida, Yersinia ruckeri, Piscirickettsia salmonis, and Streptococcus iniae, as well as common external parasites. Our diagnostic track record is evidence that our facility is free of these pathogens. This rigorous testing is expensive - prohibitively so for small hatcheries, which oftentimes must resort to an inexpensive "veterinary inspection" involving a visual-only inspection performed by a veterinarian who may know little about aquatic animals and who is incapable of detecting a dangerous pathogen. Sampling of water for pathogens is generally unreliable.
GRADING OUR NILE DELTA - LAKE NASSeR INTRA-SPECIES "HYBRID"
AmeriCulture’s loyal and successful customer base relies on our discriminating practices and the health of our fish to succeed. Our tilapia fingerlings are hatched and grown inside of our geothermally-heated greenhouses, using only pure well water from a desert aquifer. Our remote location in Southwestern New Mexico, distant from any natural bodies of water or other sources of fish, help us protect fish health.
The economic viability of every form of intensive animal agriculture, whether hogs, chickens or cattle, is significantly influenced by animal health. Aquaculture is no different. The importance of avoiding disease, not just controlling it, is even more critical in intensive aquaculture, and more so if recirculating aquaculture systems are utilized. Significant diseases can occur when significant pathogens already exist in the system, or are introduced through contaminated fish, water, or personnel.
