Reddit reviews Recirculating Aquaculture, 3rd Edition

Recirculating Aquaculture 3^rd Edition by Timmons & Ebeling.

It's hardly a picture-book (900+ pages), and it's not extremely in-depth in any one subject, but it's an authority in aquaculture and should give you a firm grasp of optimal system design

I would guess the biggest difference comes from the type and content of feed rather than the metabolism of the species. If anything, the species might be more efficient or not at converting the feed to biomass, which decides if there is more or less solid waste required to be removed from the recirculating flow

If you can find the following book in a library or borrow it then it's worth a shot to search your specific question: https://www.amazon.com/Recirculating-Aquaculture-3rd-Michael-Timmons/dp/0971264651

> Timmons

This one?

http://www.amazon.com/Recirculating-Aquaculture-Edition-Michael-Timmons/dp/0971264651/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

> Recirculating Aquaculture: 3rd Edition

Who did you murder to get that? http://www.amazon.com/Recirculating-Aquaculture-Edition-Michael-Timmons/dp/0971264651

Is there any particular part of biology you are looking to understand? For cell biology, for example, there are probably good ones that start with the mitochondrion as the power supply and explains how proteins are assembled from DNA, and then how extra proteins are digested back into amino acids by the lysosome, etc...

At the macro level there might be something but I haven't found it. Here's how I would write it though. You'd have to start with the idea that all organisms need a ton of carbon to survive, which is why there's so little of it in the atmosphere (CO2 is ~400ppm). Then note that we need relatively little Nitrogen, but the atmosphere has a ton of that (70%), so getting rid of excess Nitrogen is gonna be a key part of the system. Next note that they all need oxygen to burn energy (just like an engine), which comes largely from either what's dissolved in water or in the atmosphere (not what's bonded to hydrogen in the water, that takes a lot of energy to unwind so it's not a good oxidizer.) Finally, they need some hyrdogen but not a ton, that comes mostly from water and gets bonded to Carbons in various ways, mostly to store energy but also to make parts. From there you get a basic living organism: seeking carbon by any means possible, burning oxygen, drinking water and pumping out excess nitrogen. Every organism does each one in different ways. Plants, for example, get their carbon from the small amount in the atmosphere, Animals on the other hand have to eat other organsims to get their carbon. Plants have a weird way of handling nitrogen called the nitrogen cycle, and that I don't fully understand. Fish on the other hand pump it out in the form of amonia right into the water, which would be harmful if there weren't a whole ocean or lake of water around them to absorb it, but Mammals have to hang onto the Nitrogen and store it in a nice water-soluble form (Urea) until they can pump a bunch out at once. But that's I think waht the diagram would look like.

Anyway, I'm a Stats grad student but my research is in DNA sequence analysis, so I've spent a lot of time looking for various explanations like this and have basically had to assemble them in my head as I read wikipedia for the zillionth time. As I look back at what I wrote now I realize that it's probably exactly the kind of oversimplification you were not looking for, but it was worth a shot. Good luck and post any good ones if you find them.

ETA: Actually one thing I just thought of that you might be interested in is some explanation of how indoor recirculating aquaculture systems operate. That's how I learned a good portion of the biology I know, but a system like that is basically a big block diagram with inputs and outputs, and mass balances are the major constraints that have to be built around. This is the book I've always used, mainly because I took Timmons' course in college: http://www.amazon.com/Recirculating-Aquaculture-3rd-Michael-Timmons/dp/0971264651 . Anyway, that's a thought. Good luck.