Attention C-Box Owners. Commercial C-Box design upgrades are now available from the author.
Also available for sale is Kel's C-Box manual for COMMERCIAL culture. And if you don't wont your C-Box we may buy them. Contact us today.
Attention C-Box Owners. Commercial C-Box design upgrades are now available from the author.
Also available for sale is Kel's C-Box manual for COMMERCIAL culture. And if you don't wont your C-Box we may buy them. Contact us today.
Cumminscorp Ltd (My Story)
Imagine you had a fish culture system where hundreds of specialised holding tanks were all in the one building. Imagine these systems were called C-Boxes.
Now imagine that in the first tank you were growing barramundi. In the second tank you were growing coral trout and in the third you had Atlantic Salmon and in the fourth you had abalone.
For the first time in aquaculture history, it would be possible to culture species from both ends of the Australian Continent under the one roof. Now, imagine you had 1000 tanks under culture. Which is about 4000 tonnes of fish per year (if done right).
Freshwater and saltwater species virtually side by side utilising the vertical integration of hatchery and nursery technology, a continuous production line, if you will, all based on recycled water and existing technology.
And, such a facility could be located anywhere including the CBD of any major city.
Not only would it be possible to have fresh fish 'at the front door' but these specialised holding tanks would have a legitimate fish capacity twice that of any other current commercial fish tank system (RAS Aquaculture).
How good would you feel?
Such was the euphoria when joining the Cumminscorp C-Box Aquaculture Team at Gaven on the Gold Coast in 2005. I had the best job in the world.
As a passionate aquaculture person I cannot begin to describe the excitement and camaraderie of the anticipated expectations. C-Box technology was about to go public and we had significant orders into the Arab countries, one to New Zealand and one confirmed sale of 1000 C-Boxes into Singapore, or so we were told.
At Mr Cummins request I jumped at the chance to buy shares. My $0.14 cent shares "would easily reach $0.50 cents within 3 months" he told me.
Here was my chance. I would be technical support manager for a worldwide product and something I believed in. I borrowed as much money as I could and purchased 624,378 shares.
What Went Wrong?
Three 3 months later I had a mild heart attack from over work.
I was then suspended without written notification.
My personal files were destroyed and my office was trashed.
My euphoria had quickly gone from those dizzy heights to a feeling of riding a roller-coaster with at least one wheel missing.
At any moment I would be thrown, screaming and falling to my death.
Six weeks later I was simply reinstated as if nothing had happened.
In that short time my close friend, Mr P Smith had taken over my job and managed to kill at least 5 tonne of barramundi.
Madness!!! In the form of toxic total ammonia with pH levels maintained at 7.5 to 8...
Those who had taken my position had totally destroyed 6 months work in 6 weeks.
The disease they blindly cultivated was unknown and undocumented in Australia.
The potent combination of an unknown epistylis species, which is normally fairly harmless, combined with, Aeromonas hydrophila, observed under high magnification as a, jittery type motility, black spot, could literally strip all the scales off a barramundi in 3 days.
These scales clogged the filters and overflowed the tanks while the fish were still alive. The barramundi took about 6 days to die.
An unprecedented disease in Australian Aquaculture.
It now became clear that I was only reinstated to fix the problem.
We started out using maximum dose rates of highly toxic formalin to bring the pathogens under control. But within 3 weeks the maximum allowable dose rate had no effect. We had used over 100 litres of the stuff by this stage.
Such a tragedy it was. We filled tub after tub with dying fish. We worked hour after hour with dead carcases damming and over flowing the tanks faster than we could remove them. The emotional strains were high on staff moral as we continued to deal with a system inferior to the published information.
After three weeks we did eventually get the disease under control but inadequate filtration designs allowed it to return again and again.
No lessons were learnt and no ears were listening. These were fundamental flaws in the way Cumminscorp did business.
My sacking, the use of un-educated professional consultants and the unresolved filtration issues aided in Cumminscorp demise.
However the two reasons Cumminscorp failed was ultimately the disease issue and the failure of management to understand how to drive a C-Box and C-Box Aquapark.
Contracted management showed little interest in addressing serious design issues on some of the Cumminscorp patents. Anyone displaying regard or concern was removed for 'being treacherous'.
It was truly the dark ages of aquaculture and in that lack of light I resigned in July 2006.
Unfortunately, families have lost their homes, life savings have been lost and there is a need for recompense. Hopefully, that will take the form of product sales and dynamic adjustments on patented technologies. There are commercial solutions and there are indeed, world-wide sales and demand for such technologies.
To that end our Pod Design RAS system is available for pilot scale and commercial production construction.
We Were The First in Australia