What key points need attention in rice field eel farming?

The several key points in raising rice field eels are “good selection of seed”, “good water conditioning”, “good planting of aquatic plants”, “just the right feeding”, and “good disease prevention”.

Preparing the seed stock for rice field eels: the sources of rice field eel fry are mainly full artificial breeding of rice field eel fry, but the quantity is currently relatively small; the key is the cultivation and selection of sexually mature parent eels, then injecting oxytocin and using artificial insemination, with hatching by the same method as domestic fish hatching; the semi-artificial method does not use artificial insemination, but after injecting oxytocin allows them to spawn naturally and then hatches them by the domestic fish method; collecting natural fry, from May to September, in rice fields, ditches, lake shallows, weed areas, or adult rice field eel breeding ponds, look for spawning and hatching nests where foam gathers, scoop them out, and place them in 25°C~30°C water to hatch. Cultivating rice field eel fry: rice field eel fry cultivation should use small cement ponds, 30px~1000px deep, with about 125px of soil spread on the pond bottom, and can use “Jingbo Strong Chlorine” or quicklime to clear the pond and disinfect; apply organic fertilizer at 0.5 kg/sq m~1 kg/sq m or apply “Amino Acid Fertilizer Water Paste”, “Fertilizer Spider Treasure”, etc. to cultivate water quality; transplant tubifex, and stock water hyacinth or alligator weed and other aquatic plants; the opening bait is best as tubifex, and floating animals such as “bloodworms” or fish paste, egg yolk, etc. can also be fed, or the “soy milk feeding method” can be used; the cultivation density is 1000 fry/sq m~2000 fry/sq m, and later the density should be reduced, taking care to separate large and small ones in time to avoid mutual killing. Selection of superior rice field eel seed: artificially cultivated rice field eel seed can be selected during the cultivation process, but at present most are purchased rice field eel seed collected from the wild, so even more attention should be paid to selection. Seed with surface wounds, electrically caught fry (with bruising), hook-caught fry, abnormal body shape and abnormal body color, and obviously less mucus must not be purchased. Common rice field eel seed includes: dark yellow large-flower-spotted rice field eel, with dark yellow body color and irregular large brown spots distributed over the whole body; this species grows fast, has strong adaptability, and is large in size, making it the best variety for farming; earth-red large-flower-spotted rice field eel, with earth-red body color, covered with flower spots, good adaptability, fast growth, and large size, making it a high-quality target for farming; light yellow fine-spotted rice field eel, with light yellow body color, smaller and finer flower spots without spot lines, relatively fast growth, and relatively good adaptability; because of its wide sources, it is currently the main farmed variety; others such as those with blue body color, light black, light white, etc. grow slowly, especially the blue fine-spotted rice field eel, which almost cannot grow large and also has poor adaptability. Diet training: in artificial raising of rice field eels, cost and feed sources must be considered, so diet training should be carried out in time; do not feed for the first 3 days, then feed earthworms, yellow mealworms, snail and mussel meat, and fly maggots, then gradually mix in other feed in small amounts. After 7 days, a fixed proportion of feed can be stably supplied. Diet training should begin in the evening or at night; if needed, feeding during the day can be done, and afterward the time can slowly be shifted to daytime, but generally rice field eel farming feeds in the evening to facilitate the rice field eels' feeding at night. Before the rice field eel seed is put in, it must be disinfected: it can be bathed for 10 minutes with 3%~5% salt water or “Jundujing”, “Povidone Iodine Solution”. Also note that the temperature difference is <2℃ to prevent colds.