Feeding and Tasks in xpertSea MAX: Frequently Asked Questions
Feeding
How do you know how much feed I should give each day?
xpertSea takes the latest feed given to the pond and combines your pond’s average body weight, target growth, and feed table to establish how much feed you need to give at the end of the planning period. It then scales this amount by half bags to help you precisely feed the pond.
Every time you change a variable in the pond – the current weight, survival, or target growth rate – this feed quantity will change automatically. No need to go into excel.
Can I see the feed plan I’ve created across the farm? How do I share this with my team?
Yes! Clicking on “Feed Plan” at the top of the webpage will show you the feed plan across your entire farm. Every update to your feed plan per pond will automatically update this sheet.
Sharing with your team is easy – invite them to join the platform, as they can always access the plan without relying on you. You You can also print this or download to excel for sharing with the team quickly.
Why are there multiple average body weights shown? What do they mean?
The current weight of the pond is very important for precisely calculating how much feed to put into the pond in the upcoming days.
xpertSea will show you three average body weights to help you decide what the weight in the pond may be:
The sampled average body weight. This is the weight that came from the photos that your team took.
The predicted average body weight on the sample date. This is the AI predicted weight of the pond on the same day as the monitoring, based on all the previous weights and growth trend of the pond.
The predicted average body weight today. If you are planning days after your monitoring, xpertSea will tell you the predicted weight of the pond today so you don’t have to do the calculation.
Large differences between the sampled body weight and the predicted body weight can signal that you may have sample error. See how you can use MAX to identify and prevent sample error.
Which average body weight should I use for my feed planning?
xpertSea recommends using the most representative average body weight of the pond to plan your feed to minimize leftovers and increase growth. Because weekly samples may change drastically week over week due to sample errors, we recommend using xpertSea’s predicted weight to plan your feed. You can change this directly in the experience when planning feed to see how this impacts your feed!
Read about how to use MAX to identify and prevent sample error to learn more.
What is the “Feed Consumed” survival rate?
This is an estimated survival rate, calculated by comparing how much your feed table is telling you to feed at that average body weight and how much feed was actually consumed. xpertSea MAX calculates the amount of feed consumed by using the reported amounts of feed given and feed leftover. You can use this as a reference to see if your other survival rate calculations seem too high or low so you can precisely feed in the upcoming days.
I have hydrophone autofeeders. How do I use the xpertSea MAX feed functionality?
Use the feed plan to set your maximum or top feed to give on your feeders to maintain your trajectory to your harvest target and keep water quality high. Use tasks to report all data back into your platform to make any adjustments in subsequent days and coordinate how many bags to bring each day by the pond. However, we are actively working to improve the experience for ponds using hydrophones, so please contact us to learn more or to provide feedback.
My team plans feed differently than your tool allows us to, what do I do?
This feature is in development, and may not fit your exact needs. We encourage you to reach out to your xpertSea rep for questions and help!
Will you ever set my feed plan for me?
No – you are always in control of your feed plan. We will let you know when a pond that has been monitored does not have a feed plan set by adding a small indicator on the tab.
How can I use the feeding feature if I combine manual and automatic feeding methods for a same pond?
You can set the feed protocol in your pond’s configuration. However, a combined feeding protocol is currently unsupported.
To work around this, set your feed protocol for that pond to be automatic feeding, and add custom feeding tasks for days you also hand feed!
Can I upload my feed planning sheet my team is used to do in Excel on the platform to get the insights from MAX?
Uploading your feed table to MAX will enable you to replace your excel sheets to get feed planned. If you need to see the plan in an excel sheet, you can always download it from the Feed Planning tab.
What do you mean by “simulating” my feed plan?
Planning the feed plan 7 days in the future is often a slow tedious, process. It’s common to want to evaluate how different levels of aggressiveness in a feed plan will impact the amount of feed to be given, growth, and other metrics. Varying the aggressiveness of a feed plan can happen for many reasons – you are getting more or less growth than you expect, you have a harvest coming up, there can be heavy molting, etc.
With xpertSea MAX, by simply updating your targeted growth, weight, or survival of the pond you can simulate what your feed plan would be based on various parameters. This shows how aggressive your feeding plan needs to be, per day, to balance costs while hitting your harvest targets.
Tasks
Can my team see and complete their tasks offline?
Yes! Tasks can be viewed and completed offline. However, to share data into the platform automatically, you’ll have to connect to the internet.
How do I create tasks for my team?
Configure your farm for automatic tasks: xpertSea MAX will automatically create tasks for you when you have set up recurring tasks in your configuration and you have created a feed plan. Don’t worry – every change to the plan will automatically update your tasks.
Create custom tasks for your team: Each pond has a “tasks” tab – you can navigate to the day you want the task done and add a new task that is in the “Other” category. This can be anything – from raleos to cleaning up the roads – it’s you talking to your team directly through their phones.
How do I assign special instructions to feed tasks?
After you’ve determined how much feed you’d like to give to your team, you can set special instructions for how to administer the feed! You will see recommendations in MAX that are specific to your pond. These instructions can range from how to mix pellets to maximize survival, how to fix asymmetric distributions, and how to use distribution information to maximize the animals in your target sizes, to anything else that is important on your farm. This is you talking to your team directly through their phones.
Why is a task created not showing up?
At this point in time, tasks can only be created on the web version of xpertSea MAX, which requires internet connection to complete actions. However, if a task has been created and a phone has not opened MAX and connected to the internet since the task was created, it will not show up on the phone. Make sure that before going out to complete the day’s work, that you open MAX to load the tasks for the day.
General
What are the next features that will be available in MAX for feed planning and task management?
The next features to watch out for are:
More tasks and flexibility to run more of your farm through the platform, including monitoring tasks and custom tasks
Notifications and summaries upon task completion to always be in the loop
Personalized recommendations for how to improve your distribution through pellet mixes and special instructions
My team is not ready to use that feature on MAX, how can I use the web platform as I did before with all those changes?
This feature spans feed planning, task management, and feed adjustments. Please reach out to your xpertSea rep with questions and feedback on the limitations and suggestions you have for the tool!
