Polyculture of sleeper goby yields over 10,000 yuan per mu: a post-90s young man cleverly raises the "lazy fish"

Putting down roots in the countryside for several years and making a fortune raising fish with his own two hands - such a thing seems hard to associate with a post-90s college graduate, but Lu Zehui of Gulong Village, Hongqiao Town, Changxing County has done it. In just 3 years, he more than doubled the per-mu output value of his family's ponds. This change mainly stems from his raising a fish called the sleeper goby.

At the aquaculture base in Gulong Village, Hongqiao Town, the author met Lu Zehui, who was born in 1991. Wearing half-rim glasses, with somewhat dark skin, a slender build and a mature way of speaking, he is not the "pretty boy" people imagine a post-90s youth to be, but rather looks every bit the "veteran fisherman."

"This is the sleeper goby, which we people of Changxing call 'dangbu.'" Lu Zehui caught a fish and placed it in his palm with a simple smile. "See, this fish is very easy to catch and barely moves when placed in your hand, so it is also called the silly fish or lazy fish." Look at this sleeper goby: not big, about ten cm long, with black stripes over its whole body and a wide, flat mouth. Lu Zehui says it is these little fish that sent his aquaculture profits soaring, fetching a high price of 70 to 80 yuan per jin.

In 2012, after graduating from university, Lu Zehui returned home to raise mandarin fish and river crabs, but lacking experience, all the Chinese mitten crabs polycultured in his pond escaped, costing him 60,000 to 70,000 yuan at once. Later he learned that the Hongqiao Town government was promoting the raising of sleeper goby. Although the price was high and there was a market for it, some aquaculture farmers worried that it would eat the small shrimp and affect the yields of Chinese mitten crabs and shrimp, so few were willing to try - yet the young Lu Zehui saw a business opportunity in it.

"The sleeper goby is naturally small and at most eats some small fish and shrimp, which actually purifies the farming environment." With a let's-give-it-a-try attitude, he first trial-raised them in two ponds, polyculturing sleeper goby together with Chinese mitten crabs and river shrimp. However, when he first collected the ground cages, he found that although the yield of Chinese mitten crabs was unaffected, the yield of sleeper goby had clearly dropped, with large numbers of sleeper goby remains in the ground cages.

Fish and crabs can clearly coexist peacefully, so why did this happen? It turned out that this was caused by the sleeper goby's "laziness." When harvesting, because the fish and crabs were all crowded into one ground cage, the motionless sleeper goby was easily accidentally injured by the desperately struggling Chinese mitten crabs, thus reducing the yield. After improving the ground cages and appropriately reducing the density of fish and crabs, this problem was solved.

During the polyculture process, because the sleeper goby ate the harmful small fish and shrimp, both the yield and quality of the Chinese mitten crabs improved. Today, all of Lu Zehui's 100 mu of crab ponds use this polyculture model, and the per-mu output value has risen from the initial 4,000 to 5,000 yuan to more than 10,000 yuan. Now, more than 10 aquaculture farmers in Changxing have already polycultured this fish, and their profits have all improved noticeably.