Expanding to Pacus

[GoHereDoThis]

I've never used Pacus before as a food source aside from what naturally spawns on the map and dies.  I never considered them as a food source because they eat algae and I keep on worrying I'd run out.  Almost every build I do, I run out at some point but my current build has good SPOM setups so I was thinking of expanding to include Pacus and eventually make surf n' turf.  I've looked at YT and the newest videos are about a year old so I wonder if they are still viable today?  Does the community have a preferred/ideal build layout?  I don't have the beta/expansion, just the base game if that makes any difference.

Any advice and suggestions for a first-time Pacu farmer would be appreciated!  Thanks!

[sakura_sk]

I prefer "lazy" builds, meaning as little dupe interaction as possible. Usually when I have my hatch farms ready (2-3 stables, stone hatches for  coal+eggs), I build a 3 tile deep pit with at least 1000kg of water at the bottom, close to my printing pod, in order to use it as "evolution" chamber for my hatches and pool for occasional pacu prints. Then building an auto-sweeper transferring meat and pacu fillet to the kitchen and dupes only have to cook.

If you want to increase your population of pacu, I would suggest to feed only one in the beggining and stop when enough eggs are produced (don't remember exact numbers pacus/dupe). Leaving them in a room large enough so they don't get cramped, they will produce an egg before they die.

[Nxf7]

 

[degr]

Breeding room for 2 pacu::

auto-swiper remove eggs from room, box is out of sweeper range. After pacu die, I put 2 eggs manually into box.

And here is result of 500+cycles of breeding. Actually, I use 1-pacu farm first 400 breeding cycles, now I use 2. From my advices, no need to feed them all at once, feed from one to eight. Also, there were guide how to reduce amount of algae for breeding, but I'm too lazy for it.

Actually, have pacu is good idea because they provide free food source, but, as all free sources it is not efficient. For an example, I have 130-140 pacu. Pacu lifetime is 25 years, so, every cycle 5 pacu die, so I got 5000*1.6 +1000(from surf and turf) = 9000 kkal per cycle. Each my dupe eat 1.500 kkal per cycle, so I spend 500 cycles to get free food for only 6 dupes (from 57), it's around 10%. Also, I make large pond of water for this pacu, which block movement and which block gas flow.

 

[Rinkusan]

@degr Couldn't you just store those 140 pacu in 1 square of water instead of that giant tank of water?

[babba]

11 minutes ago, Rinkusan said:

@degr Couldn't you just store those 140 pacu in 1 square of water instead of that giant tank of water?

Then it wouldn`t look like in a Bond movie shark fish tank of the villain

[Rinkusan]

34 minutes ago, babba said:

Then it wouldn`t look like in a Bond movie shark fish tank of the villain

True, but a real villain would keep their pacus overcrowded and unhappy :P

[degr]

Did they lay eggs when overcrowded?

[sakura_sk]

3 hours ago, degr said:

Did they lay eggs when overcrowded?

If they are glum (have enough calories to make it to "egg production cycle") I think they lay an egg. When they are cramped they don't.

[Rinkusan]

5 hours ago, degr said:

Did they lay eggs when overcrowded?

From what I understand, as long as they aren't cramped or confined, pretty much any tamed critter with a lifespan of 75 cycles or lower is guaranteed to produce an egg before they starve to death. For pacus, tiles of water only affects overcrowding while the other 2 debuffs are dictated by the size of the whole room.

[babba]

It`s a shame pacu`s don`t bite dupes, they look like they would - Maybe Klei can revisit someday (2025) if everything needs to be cute in the game.

On the other hand...

[Pyrex042]

Come check out this thread in the DLC room, we've been having an in-depth (pun intended) discussion of  managing Overcrowded vs. Cramped and how to get the most mileage out of your Pacu:

 

[degr]

On 2/14/2021 at 9:17 PM, Rinkusan said:

From what I understand, as long as they aren't cramped or confined, pretty much any tamed critter with a lifespan of 75 cycles or lower is guaranteed to produce an egg before they starve to death. For pacus, tiles of water only affects overcrowding while the other 2 debuffs are dictated by the size of the whole room.

As I can see, they can sit in one tile and lay eggs. However, I would like to keep my large water tank because I can and because of this:

On 2/14/2021 at 12:40 PM, babba said:

Then it wouldn`t look like in a Bond movie shark fish tank of the villain

 

[Occam Blazer]

I started making pickled pacu in my latest DLC playthrough. There are about 60 pacu and 80 gulp fish in my food stock to feed 9 dupes. It still takes a breeder or two to keep increasing the population but I have a great supply. That many gulp fish can filter as much polluted water as I can throw at them. When the cool slush geyser feeds them all I make is ice. It's kind of insane once the ranch spins up (and that does take a while).

[chochko]

I present you the near zero dupe work Pacu farm.

The door above the gen pop is solid, to allow flip-flopping Pacu to enter the feeding chamber when it is empty.

Eggs from gen pop are collected in the hatching chamber as well those in the feeding chamber.
 

[DimaB77]

I can offer my own scheme, which is extremely simple. 100+ Pacu (limited by the speed of your computer)

[JRup]

On 2/16/2021 at 3:19 PM, babba said:

It`s a shame pacu`s don`t bite dupes, they look like they would

Did you get the trading cards?

Spoiler