Freshwater Farming Methods and Techniques for the greasyback shrimp

The greasyback shrimp is a delicacy everyone is familiar with, and there are opportunities to eat it everywhere in daily life, not only because of its delicious taste, but also because the yield of greasyback shrimp is high, so everyone can eat it at any time. As a shrimp bred in freshwater and farmed in seawater enclosures, how should it be farmed? What should be noted during the farming process?

Farming Methods for the greasyback shrimp

1. Shrimp fry desalination: The key to the success of desalinated farming of the greasyback shrimp lies in the desalination of the shrimp fry. During the desalination process, seedling producers should proceed step by step, and abrupt desalination is strictly prohibited. The shrimp fry must be desalinated until the salinity-specific gravity is 1.003 before they can be directly transferred into freshwater for farming.

2. After the shrimp fry enter the pond, routine management work begins. During the farming period, in addition to strengthening safe production measures, the main tasks are water quality management, feeding management, and disease prevention and control.

3. Feeding: One month after the shrimp fry are put into the pond, they mainly feed on plankton in the rice field. After one month, when they grow to 2-3 cm, they are mainly fed fine artificial compound pellet feed (shrimp feed), with a daily feeding amount of 5-6% of the shrimp body weight; if the water temperature reaches 24-30°C, the greasyback shrimp feed vigorously, and the daily feeding amount increases to 8-10%. Feed 3-4 times a day, with the evening feeding accounting for 40% of the whole day's feed. Where conditions permit, plankton and wild trash fish can be collected from external abandoned pits or rice fields as supplementary feed.

Techniques for Freshwater Farming of the greasyback shrimp

1. The pond area should preferably be 0.13 hectares to 0.2 hectares, with a depth of 1.5 m to 2 m. The pond bottom should be flat, with about 10 cm of silt retained at the bottom, and a ring ditch should be dug around it, 4 m wide and 0.5 m deep. HDPE geomembrane can be used for seepage prevention at the pond bottom. The pond should have sufficient water sources, fresh and pollution-free water quality, and an independent water inlet and drainage system.

2. Before stocking shrimp fry, the pond should be cleaned and disinfected to remove wild trash fish and other harmful organisms to shrimp. About 20 days before stocking, 100 kg to 150 kg of quicklime per mu of water surface should be slaked into slurry and splashed over the whole pond for disinfection; 7 days before stocking, 150 kg of decomposed and fermented organic fertilizer (mainly livestock and poultry manure) should be applied per mu of water surface, followed by filling with water to a depth of 50 cm.

3. When filling with water, the water inlet should be filtered with a 40-mesh sieve silk net to prevent harmful organisms to shrimp from entering the shrimp pond; after about 7 days, large numbers of zooplankton such as copepods and rotifers appear in the pond. This is the best time to put the shrimp fry into the pond.

What Is the Difference Between Shrimp and the greasyback shrimp

1. Because the sand shrimp belongs to the sand shrimp category, also called the greasyback shrimp, wild sand shrimp prefer to live in sandy-mud bottoms and shallow seas with lower salinity. They usually habitually hide their bodies in the seabed, with only their eyes and the front of the head protruding for breathing, using this to escape enemies and wait for food. At high tide, they crawl into slow-flowing inner bays to inhabit.

2. Shrimp have harder shells, obvious yellow-red stripes, are somewhat small, and have a crisp and sweet taste, with no spine (rostral spine) on the forehead, while the prawn looks similar to the tiger prawn in appearance, but it is large and plump, has a spine on the forehead, and its shrimp meat tissue is firm. Its taste is not as good as the greasyback shrimp, and it has no sweet flavor.

3. Metapenaeus is commonly called sand shrimp or greasyback shrimp, and among the general public it is more often called the greasyback shrimp. The greasyback shrimp is bred in freshwater and farmed in seawater enclosures, and its name comes from “enclosure-based farming.” The greasyback shrimp resembles the prawn in form, but its shell is softer than that of the prawn, and its body size is not as large as the prawn's. It is generally about the size of a middle finger. The yield is relatively high in the estuary sea areas along the coast of Guangdong, and it is plump with a thin shell and delicious, refreshing meat.

Farming Prospects for the greasyback shrimp

First, here is a simple list of some figures to give everyone an objective understanding of the returns and expenses. Taking one mu as an example, the cost from renting land to leveling it to a state suitable for farming is about 20,000 yuan, plus later feed input of about 20,000 yuan, for a total cost of about 40,000 yuan. The yield per mu is about 2,000 jin, and the average selling price is 30 yuan/jin. The net profit is about 2,000*30-20,000=20,000 yuan. After deducting some losses and non-direct sales, the total profit is about 15,000 yuan. As for the current overall trend, the price of the greasyback shrimp is showing a steady upward state. First, the price of the greasyback shrimp is gradually becoming more affordable, more and more people can afford to eat it, and demand is rising.

The greasyback shrimp basically resembles the prawn in form, but its shell is softer than the prawn's, and it is plump with a thin shell and delicious, refreshing meat. The greasyback shrimp is so delicious that for food lovers it is an irresistible delicacy, and at the same time, for people in the farming industry, it is a good business opportunity.