How much was whitebait and dried whitebait per jin in 2019? How to farm them
Whitebait is one of China's prized aquatic products, hailed as a delicacy for the table, long renowned at home and abroad, and a hot spot in aquaculture in recent years. So how much were whitebait and dried whitebait per jin in 2019? How do you farm them?
1. How much is whitebait per jin?
Whitebait has extremely high nutritional value and its price is not particularly expensive, with fresh fish at about 6-10 yuan per jin and dried fish at about 30-40 yuan per jin. Moreover, whitebait is rich in resources, high in nutritional value and delicious in taste, and can be used for food processing, fishmeal processing and frozen product processing; its frozen products sell well at home and abroad as feed for fish farming, making it one of the important varieties earning foreign exchange through exports in recent years.
2. How to farm whitebait
1. Pond requirements
Farming whitebait first requires building a pond suitable for whitebait growth; you can choose an old pond that has been used for farming before. Ensure the pond water is clean, sheltered from the wind, with sufficient light and good drainage and irrigation capacity. Control the pond area and number according to the farming quantity, and the pond water depth must not be less than 2 m. There should be some aquatic plants around it. Note that whitebait is very fragile. Therefore we cannot mix-culture them with carnivorous and omnivorous fish, to avoid these fish attacking and eating the whitebait.
2. Seedling cultivation
First prepare a seedling cultivation pond, turn over the mud at the bottom of the cultivation pond, then carry out comprehensive and thorough disinfection before adding an appropriate amount of clean water. Because whitebait seedlings have many growth requirements, ordinary pond water cannot be used for cultivation, so nutrient-rich water must be used for cultivation. The young fish feed on rotifers and various nauplii, and start feeding about 9 days after hatching; after they start feeding, bait must be put in promptly, because if it is not provided in time for more than three days it will lead to death. Therefore, before the young fish start feeding, sufficient fertilizer must be applied to ensure there is enough bait after the young fish start feeding. During the cultivation period, fertilizer should be applied frequently, and the amount of fertilizer should be controlled according to the water color and water volume, ensuring the transparency of the pond water is above 35 cm.
3. Adult fish farming
Adult fish have strong growth capacity and their growth rate speeds up noticeably, so fertilizer should be applied frequently to cultivate plankton; the fertilizer can be decomposed farmyard manure, with the application amount well controlled and adjusted appropriately according to water quality and farming quantity. Then during the farming process, prevent gasping for air at the surface, because whitebait growth has very high dissolved oxygen requirements. If whitebait gasping at the surface is not dealt with in time, it may lead to death on a large scale. When the gasping phenomenon is serious, reduce the amount of fertilizer to avoid excessive plankton, change the water regularly, and increase oxygen in time.
4. Feeding management
Whitebait's feeding habits change at a certain stage, gradually shifting from vegetarian feed such as cladocerans to carnivorous feed. Therefore we should observe the growth of the whitebait regularly; when we find that most whitebait have a body length close to about 0.8-1 cm and there are a small number of fish and shrimp in their stomach and intestines, it indicates that the whitebait are already in the period of feeding habit transformation. At this time we should add an appropriate amount of small fish and shrimp smaller than the whitebait to the feed to promote the growth of the whitebait. Pay attention to the quantity of fish and shrimp to prevent overcrowding; in May-June, introduce an appropriate amount of pregnant freshwater shrimp, and the hatched young shrimp will just be available to the whitebait in time.