The Pacu Box is dead! Long live the Pacu Box!

[Saturnus]

So with the new update the pacu box of old with unlimited pacus in a single tile starvation pool is effectively dead.

Now we're limited to a maximum of 9 starving pacu in a single tile, if that tile is part of a 8 tile body of water.

9 starving pacus gives 360g of pacu fillets per cycle which is 360kcal raw, 576kcal as cooked seafood, or 2160kcal as part of surf'n'turf.
(Important note: these are not just theoretical numbers but exactly the amounts measured after 100 cycles. Except there was also 2kg (20g/cycle) of raw eggs, and 120kg (1200g/cycle) of egg shells per full starvation box.)

Obviously, those numbers are on average. So you must have a suitable food buffer.
However, the gaziilion kcals of food storage many players seem to strive for aren't exactly needed.

Anyway, you're probably itching to see the new pacu box... 

This is divided into a feeder, a breeder, and any number of starvation "pools".

One breeder can sustain up to 66 starvation "pools" and itself when we filter out the occasional gulp fry eggs.
However, it would take 1000s of cycles for one breeder to fill up that many starvation pools. I would recommend a maximum of 6 starvation pools for each breeder to keep the start up time before full production is reached to a more reasonable 100'ish cycles. 

All liquid tiles are 30g (self-contained mass on a free tile) except those marked which are 400kg. The types of liquids doesn't matter too much.
The "move to" feature makes it fairly easy to place the liquids. And even extend with more starvation pools later as needed by colony demands. 

The power overlay is fairly straight forward. Just note that like with the other overlays the power lines are extended into the last tile because that makes it easier to expand with more pools later on.

Although the potential power consumption is staggeringly high for a large build due to the many sweepers and loaders. Just using a single small transformer will be plenty power in actual use.

The egg loop on the right is to keep circulating eggs to a free spot on the line and it also sorts out gulp fish eggs because we do not want them if our pools are polluted water as they'll reduce them to a puddle, and we also don't want external cooling in this self-contained unit. So they're gone.

The automation feature both a breeder stop and a feeder stop.

If the breeder and all "pools" have eggs/pacu ready then the feeder egg loader is stopped instantly stopping reproduction of the breeder when it holds an egg as the breeder pacu becomes cramped. The 200s filter delay for the pacu to flop a single tile left is obviously complete overkill but hey why not, eh?

Unfortunately, the breeder pacu metabolism is still 100% when cramped even though reproduction is stopped so there's an additional 200s filter delay to start the feeder. The limit of the weight plate and the fish feeder is set to 1kg if you're using seeds, and 20kg if you're using algae.

Please note the difference between the feeder and starvation pool weight plate settings. You want up to two eggs in each starvation pool.

Important update:

This tile in the feeder cannot be polluted water as gulp fish apparently now have reach. Salt water or another liquid is fine.

Another update:

If you're planning on doing more than two starvation pools, and you're probably going to, then changing the liquids in the feeder part to something that can't freeze, and isn't polluted water will be needed when running several hundred cycles as the sorted out gulp fish eggs are really powerful coolers over time in the larger amounts you get with more starvation pools used.

Or if you don't mind the occasional interruption of the feeder mechanish then just have the feeder room filled with air instead. Unless you're running a completely unrealistic amount of starvation pools it really doesn't matter too much if the feeder is occasionally interrupted by flopping gulp fish.

The latter is probably the better option overall if your OCD tolerates having flopping pacus in the feeder.

[Fleetfeet]

There's a ton in here I'd benefit greatly from experimenting with, thanks for the detailed build review!

[Mementh]

ok, so you mention things about cooling.

 

how is this keeping cool ? how is it removing heat ( i figure i am missing something )

 

i used blueprintsnotincluded to get this ready.. am i missing anything?

new pacu brick.blueprint

[Saturnus]

When hatched critters are born with a fixed temperature, and when they reach adulthood that temperature is reset again. And when they die of old age, the heat they absorbed during adulthood is mostly deleted as the meat dropped is a tiny fraction of their mass when alive.
Since pacus weigh 200kg of genetic ooze each, that's a lot of thermal mass that is constantly cooling the setup.

The higher the temperature the more heat is deleted hence in the old days with unlimited amount of pacus possible in one tile that was an effective, though unconventional, way to tame Cool Steam Vents.

Although technically not needed I'd still use a pacu farm to cool my oxygen output. If you use 95c water in electrolyzers, and that oxygen runs through your pacu farm it will stabilize around 42c.

Nearly all critters ranches can be used as powerful industrial coolers. Easily able to cool the industrial equiment you set up in the "wasted" part of a hatch ranch for example.

[Pherl]

Great build! Any tips on how to setup the liquid in survival? Seems hard especially the 400kg one.

[Paperbag]

I have a question: why is the breeder tank's water like that instead of just liquid-layering a 2×4 of water and blocking off one tile for the pacu to be in with mesh tiles and doors? Is it space for machinery?

[Parusoid]

On 11/19/2023 at 3:48 PM, Saturnus said:

So with the new update the pacu box of old with unlimited pacus in a single tile starvation pool is effectively dead

how do we do other ranches now?
most of the builds for other animals consisted of breeding room and overpopulation room, now overpopulated one will be miserable but before it still gave resources

[Prince Mandor]

Isn't it possible to make this more compact and less metal-hungry (1600+kg to feed one dupe is not easy )? I tried to reorder it to use one pair of sweepers/loaders per two pools, but without any good result. It looks like it possible, just every time it don't fit slightly

May be someone got better results?