Pacu ranch design with <1100 kg total water :-)

[Eleyvie]

So I've been experimenting with Pacu ranch design, and this seems to be my best shot so far.

Overall size is 16x9, which is essentially 2 standard 16x4 rooms. A 40-tile room is left free to be used for some other purpose.

Breeder chamber has 52 tiles of free space and 48 tiles of water tank, allowing up to 6 Pacus. Sustenance chamber has minimal required sizes.

In both chambers Pacus only have a single tile of 350+ kg water to live, eliminating any pathfinding.

Egg removal can be both automated and low-tech through the locked door, so the ranch can function perfectly fine with dupe labor instead of auto-sweepers.

Requirements:

• 702+ kg of Water (2 kg for breeding chamber, 700 kg for sustenance chamber);
• 352+ kg of Polluted Water (350 for breeding chamber, trace amounts for sustenance chamber);
• 4+ kg of Salt Water (2 kg for breeding chamber, trace amounts for sustenance chamber);
• 4+ kg of Brine (2 kg for breeding chamber, trace amounts for sustenance chamber).

Total amount of water: 1062+ kg.

[Craigjw]

What prevents them hopping into the pool on the left?  I'm assuming that the door on the left of the ladder closes?

[Eleyvie]

How would they? Pacus can't jump out of water last I checked. And freshly hatched ones can only go to the right (sustenance) chamber.

[Craigjw]

I just don't know how this works, not enough info.  I certainly know what it will cost me in resources though.

[Eleyvie]

You drop a Pacu egg into the pool with the fish feeder. Pacu hatches up, grows, eats algae, gets tamed and starts reproducing.

Pacus need both room size and pool size to avoid debuffs, and those are calculated separately. Room requirement is pretty standard except Pacus only need 8 tiles of space per creature, while pool size is calculated as the number of connected liquid tiles (including mesh tiles and any liquid connected through them). And pretty much any liquid tile counts, I haven't checked but pretty sure even magma would work if not for solidifying/evaporation issues.

Up to 6 breeding Pacus can fit into the room. Any egg in excess of this amount is auto-sweeped into the small birthing chamber up top.

Any Pacu hatched in the birthing chamber can only flop to the right and drops to sustenance chamber. Pacus there will be overcrowded and won't be fed, but they will still lay some eggs before dying. Any eggs from there are sweeped into the birthing chamber to hatch there.

You get a steady supply of Pacu fillets and egg shells from this system once it gets running, and you can regulate it's output  and algae requirements by controlling the population in the breeding chamber with a critter detector. Pretty sure you can cut down on algae by feeding 1 kilo of algae, but that's only reliable with a single pacu per feeder.

[Craigjw]

It makes much more sense now, thank you for that.  I like the design, my current fish farm is a monster at 1350 tiles for the ramming pool and while the automation I've used works well, there's a lot of it.

for the Algae, I think it's something like 1kg/60s, which is fine when I am on-screen, but when I go offscreen, I get messages about my pacu's starving and have found that setting the delay closer to 30s gives less messages.  I'm not sure if the breeding rate decreases or not, but having that message show implies that their breeding rate is not buffed also.

My only suggestion would be to have a critter sensor in the breeding room, which opens the left hand door & closes the right hand door, until you have a critter in the breeding room.

[biopon]

I like this because you can use the 2kg water space on the left for batteries, transformers, etc. They shouldn't flood with just 2kg pressure.

@Eleyvie, for your sustenance chamber, 1 full water tile is enough. They will be overcrowded anyway, right? Air tiles are counted to prevent them from being confined, and you take the eggs out to prevent cramped; the rest doesn't matter.

On 10/28/2019 at 9:44 AM, Eleyvie said:

1 kilo of algae

I'm doing that if I can't afford 200kg, and it's pretty painful. They lay maybe 2 eggs before they die, and the whole thing takes 25 cycles. It's possible I'm doing it wrong but I also don't mind feeding them 200kg until I'm out; what else is algae good for?

[Craigjw]

Feeding them with 200kg will deplete your algae really quickly.  Why waste your algae, if you need it later on, you've got none.

What is Algae worth to me? Steel.

If I run out of Algae, I can't make as much Steel. I'd argue that your algae is quite valuable.

[biopon]

It will deplete it quickly for sure, but you'll also get 2 eggs every 3 cycles per fish. And those eggs will hatch to live forever, barring some accidents. If I build up a large population early on, I don't mind not having any more algae left.

Feeding them 1kg/cycle is just a super slow way of generating 2 eggs in 25 cycles, they spend most of it glum because of starvation. :/ First I heard about 1kg/30sec is from you above, I would imagine this not only resets the starve timer but also makes the status go away? That would be fantastic.

Edit: I just watched them eat their daily 1kg dose, and the starving debuff went away for maybe 10-15 seconds. I suppose that's still less than 200kg cycle.

[Craigjw]

I am patient and watch my population grow nicely, with the comforting knowledge that I have 136t of algae left and should I lose my entire fish population, I have algae enough to rebuild it.  This has happened on numerous occasions.

There are a bunch of reasons for what might cause your pacu's to die, some of which you just cannot guarantee won't happen, in which case, Whatcha gonna do when you got no algae?

You don't need to feed them every 60s if you don't want to, when I want my population to grow rapidly, I set the timer to 1kg/10s or something.  ~1kg/60s is just about the lower limit to keeping them alive while producing 2 eggs.

[JessIAm]

On 10/29/2019 at 12:57 PM, Craigjw said:

Feeding them with 200kg will deplete your algae really quickly.  Why waste your algae, if you need it later on, you've got none.

What is Algae worth to me? Steel.

If I run out of Algae, I can't make as much Steel. I'd argue that your algae is quite valuable.

Couldn't a timer be used to limit feeding?

On 10/28/2019 at 4:32 AM, Eleyvie said:

So I've been experimenting with Pacu ranch design, and this seems to be my best shot so far.

Overall size is 16x9, which is essentially 2 standard 16x4 rooms. A 40-tile room is left free to be used for some other purpose.

Breeder chamber has 52 tiles of free space and 48 tiles of water tank, allowing up to 6 Pacus. Sustenance chamber has minimal required sizes.

In both chambers Pacus only have a single tile of 350+ kg water to live, eliminating any pathfinding.

Egg removal can be both automated and low-tech through the locked door, so the ranch can function perfectly fine with dupe labor instead of auto-sweepers.

Requirements:

• 702+ kg of Water (2 kg for breeding chamber, 700 kg for sustenance chamber);
• 352+ kg of Polluted Water (350 for breeding chamber, trace amounts for sustenance chamber);
• 4+ kg of Salt Water (2 kg for breeding chamber, trace amounts for sustenance chamber);
• 4+ kg of Brine (2 kg for breeding chamber, trace amounts for sustenance chamber).

Total amount of water: 1062+ kg.

 

 

It would be very helpful to me to see the automation overlay, power overlay,etc.

In addition to hoping to see these, I'm wondering how the eggs are placed in the sustenance tank.

[psusi]

On 10/29/2019 at 3:57 PM, Craigjw said:

What is Algae worth to me? Steel.

Wait, what does algae have to do with steel?

[Yalp]

1 hour ago, psusi said:

Wait, what does algae have to do with steel?

Algae -> more Pacus -> more Egg Shells -> more Lime -> more Steel

[psusi]

40 minutes ago, Yalp said:

Algae -> more Pacus -> more Egg Shells -> more Lime -> more Steel

Oh, right... I thought the implication was that there was a better way to spend algae than on feeding pacu that would get steel, but now I see he meant spend less on each one, and you can breed up more.

[Craigjw]

On 20/11/2019 at 4:54 PM, psusi said:

Wait, what does algae have to do with steel?

You feed fish with algae, fish produce eggs, eggs are used to make lime.

What is lime used for?

[beowulf2010]

9 hours ago, Craigjw said:

You feed fish with algae, fish produce eggs, eggs are used to make lime.

What is lime used for?

Margheritas? 

[FSharpDotNet]

Lime is used to make steel.

[Craigjw]

The question was rhetorical.

[psusi]

A mechanized airlock will block access to an auto sweeper when closed right?  So you could put a bin full of algae behind one and only open it once a day to let the auto sweeper transfer 1 kg of algae to the fish feeder right?

 

[Craigjw]

Mechanical door - no,

pneumatic door - yes.

or you could just put a timer on the sweeper and activate it for 5s every 100s, which is about the minimum time interval for minimum feeding to maintain a non-starving debuff with 1kg of algae.

1kg Once a day, that will starve your fish and kill it.

[psusi]

38 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

or you could just put a timer on the sweeper and activate it for 5s every 100s, which is about the minimum time interval for minimum feeding to maintain a non-starving debuff with 1kg of algae.

You want the sweeper to always be on so it can immediately sweep the eggs.

39 minutes ago, Craigjw said:

1kg Once a day, that will starve your fish and kill it.

Critters have to remain starving 10 cycles before they die.  If they eat once, that resets the starvation timer.

[bobucles]

1 hour ago, psusi said:

Critters have to remain starving 10 cycles before they die.  If they eat once, that resets the starvation timer.

This is the trick behind most Pacu setups. Feeding them algae the normal way will annihilate your food supply. But putting those fish on a diet of 1kg per cycle will stretch their diet to last a hundred times, no maybe even a thousand times longer.  Pacu really benefits from the population growth and their normal output is pretty useless. No other critter is really worth starving in the same way.

[beowulf2010]

3 hours ago, psusi said:

You want the sweeper to always be on so it can immediately sweep the eggs.

Critters have to remain starving 10 cycles before they die.  If they eat once, that resets the starvation timer.

Two different sweepers. A mostly off one for the feeder, the other for the eggs. 

As for the starvation timer, it slows down their reproduction if you feed them just once a day. @Craigjw's suggested 1kg 5 times a cycle is enough to keep them making eggs fast and not burn through algae. 

[psusi]

9 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

As for the starvation timer, it slows down their reproduction if you feed them just once a day. @Craigjw's suggested 1kg 5 times a cycle is enough to keep them making eggs fast and not burn through algae. 

In that case why not 5 kg once per cycle?

[beowulf2010]

37 minutes ago, psusi said:

In that case why not 5 kg once per cycle?

Because they'll eat the 5kg in one go and go back to starving and not making eggs.