The Lee Kay Hatchery raises some of the biggest and toothiest fish in Utah. The Hatchery located west of Salt Lake City, UT produces many of the Tiger Musky stocked in Utah reservoirs. Tiger Musky are a cross between a northern pike and a muskellunge. Built in 1998 the hatchery is one of eleven production hatcheries owned by the State of Utah and is a rearing facility for northern pike and muskellunge used as brood stock.

The four, warm-water ponds on the hatchery grounds were created to serve as a home for the adult northern pike and muskellunge in hopes biologists could obtain eggs and milt to create the sterile tiger muskies planted in Utah reservoirs.

There are no personnel at the hatchery on a regular basis. Hatchery staff must travel from the Springville, UT hatchery, one-hour away.

To protect the expensive brood stock and alert remote hatchery staff of abnormal water quality conditions, a water quality measurement and early warning system was designed and installed by Frontier Precision in January 2021. The measurement and alarm system consists of In-Situ AquaTroll 500 multi-parameter water quality probes installed in each of the four ponds. Each multiprobe has sensors to measure temperature, dissolved oxygen, and pH. A centrally located wiper on each multiprobe automatically cleans each sensor once an hour to minimize sensor drift from biological fouling. All four multiprobes are connected to a single Campbell Scientific CR300 datalogger with an integrated 4G LTE cellular modem. The system is run from a battery so that monitoring and alerts stay operational even during power outages.

Remote hatchery staff can view near real time water quality data from all four ponds on their smart phones (iOS and Android). They also receive text and e-mail alerts should any parameter fall outside of pre-set bounds (e.g. pH above 9 or below 5).

Frontier Precision serves the natural resource community with water quality sensors, water level and flow sensors, echo sounders, acoustic doppler current profilers, automatic water samplers, remote telemetry, and rugged field computers.

You can see our water resources products at www.frontierprecision.com/water-products . You may also contact our Utah or Idaho offices directly for more information:  Steve Combe 801-791-3407, or Martin Soto, 208-324-8006.