What do mudskippers like to eat? Understanding their feeding habits
The mudskipper, also known as the mudskipper, is a warm-water small bottom-dwelling fish of coastal waters. It likes to inhabit mud and muddy sand in the high tide zone or the tidal flats of brackish estuaries. So what do mudskippers like to eat?
1. What do mudskippers like to eat?
Mudskippers like to eat small crabs, blue-green algae, diatoms, nematodes, marine nematodes, organic debris, sand and mud, protozoa, and so on. But they mainly feed on phytoplankton or small benthic invertebrates.
2. How are mudskippers farmed?
1. Pond conditions. Ponds for farming mudskippers are generally 2 to 10 mu. The pond bottom should be flat, and soft clay is best as the bottom substrate, as it helps mudskippers burrow and inhabit. The pond bottom should be higher than the low tide line of the sea area, making it easy to drain the water and dry the flat. Dig a cross-shaped ditch in the center of the pond, and open a ring-shaped edge ditch along the pond edge, forming the character “&rdquo. Generally, the ditch is 2 m wide and about 30 cm deep, to shelter mudskippers when draining and drying the flat. It is best to separate the inlet and outlet water, connected to the central ditch. The pond bottom should slope from the inlet gate to the drainage gate, and the bottom of the drainage gate should be about 20 cm lower than the bottom of the inlet gate, to help drain the pond water completely. Escape-prevention facilities should be set up at the inlet and drainage gates and around the pond.
2. Pond clearing and disinfection. Half a month before stocking, drain the pond water first and dry the flat continuously for several days until the flat surface dries into a cracked pattern. Then, apply 75 to 100 kg of quicklime per mu or 30 ppm of bleaching powder (32% effective chlorine) evenly over the whole pond for disinfection, to remove harmful organisms.
3. Cultivating bottom algae. After the farming pond is cleared and disinfected, begin cultivating bottom algae. The method is to apply 20 to 30 kg of fermented chicken manure or pig manure and 15 kg of rice bran per mu of pond, and algae growth hormone, microorganisms, oil bran, etc. can also be added. When fertilizing, choose a windless sunny day and evenly splash the chicken manure and other materials onto the pond bottom, taking care not to let it pile up. Then, add seawater to a depth of 10 to 15 cm, with a seawater specific gravity of 1.010 to 1.014 being suitable. After 3 to 5 days, the bottom algae gradually multiply and form an algal bed. An algal bed of brown diatoms and relatively tender green algae is best.
4. Stocking fry. After the bottom algae are cultivated, fry can be stocked. The fry mainly come from natural fry collected from sea areas. The selected fry should have complete fins, intact scales, no mechanical damage, and strong vitality. The stocking density should be controlled at 5000 to 7000 fish per mu, with a size of 200 to 240 fish per kg. Since mudskippers do not cannibalize each other, they can be stocked in batches, and at harvest the large ones are caught while the small ones are left.
5. Grow-out management. After fry are first stocked, the water depth should be maintained at about 10 to 15 cm, and the water quality should be kept clear so that sunlight can penetrate to the pond bottom, allowing algae to carry out photosynthesis and accelerating the multiplication of bottom algae. But after a period of farming, the previously cultivated bottom algae will be eaten by the mudskippers, and the water quality will begin to become turbid. To meet the growth needs of the mudskippers in the pond, at this time the water should be drained in time to dry the bottom and fertilize, so as to regrow the bottom algae for the mudskippers to forage on. But it is worth noting that when draining and drying the pond, attention should be paid to the weather forecast, otherwise if it rains, the algal bed will be washed away. In addition, prevent harm to the mudskippers from predatory fish, birds, crabs, sea snails, and so on.