Wednesday 24 October 2012

4 success KEY of aquaculture farming

Fish, Algae, Water, Soil

To 'breed' the good fish, u have to 'breed' the good Algae!
To 'breed' the good Algae, u have to 'breed' the good water!
To 'breed' the good water, u have to 'breed' the good soil!


Last week, i received the phone call from my customer: "Ken, this year, finally i do not loss money!!" Meaning that he had make a big money from his shrimp farming project!


Congratulation, my frenz!! Haha, you should treat me a meal some day.

For this customer's example:

His ponds have produced around 

6480kg weight of shrimp ,assuming  the conversion ratio of 1:1, meaning he had put in 6480 kg feed food

Shrimp water content is around 70% (dry weight is 30%).

Conservative estimation: His pool has accumulated a total of 4500 kilograms of excrement, feces residue.


To assume biological digestibility efficiency = 50% ,

The total accumulation of the organic matters, feces residue will achieve a total weight of 4500/2 = 2250kg.

This just once farmed conservative estimation.

How does this particular pond going to digest this accumulated amount of 2250kg organic residue?
This residue will be putrefied by bad microbes and turn out become odor if not treated in proper way.
This poisonous leftover eventually act as disease causing substance
What about next time? Next Year if restart the farming?

Is it enough to just sun dry, apply lime to eliminate the bad microbes eliminated the odor smell?

All farmers are all aware of quality of pool water are highly dependent on the soil
quality of pond.

According to this friend's practice, the steps are quite practical and effective.


1. Dry the soil under hot sun (Sterilization)

2. Dig and mix around 20 cm, dry again under sun. (sterilization, oxidation)

3. Sprinkle the lime on the soil (improved soil PH).

4. Apply bleaching agent 10PPM.

5. Apply Kucha meal. (Probably killed off all microbes )

6. 7 days after inserted the pond water, apply good probiotic in the water. ( to become dominant microbes in the pond and further digest the residue)


Noted, a total of 4 times killing the microbes ( good and bad microbes), the way is effective, just that it need time. There is better ways indeed:)

Tuesday 23 October 2012

Why my Phototropic bacteria was not effective?

"Why my Phototropic bacteria was not effective?"
"Aren't The product leaflet, experts saying phototropic bacteria (Purple Non Sulfur Bacteria -PNSB) is very good and fast acting for aquaculture, i have been applying for few times, but why the water turbidity still remained unchanged?"

This is the questions of one of my old-aged customer - Uncle Kong, a shrimp farmer. I can understand his feeling of desiring a successful farming.. Do not worry uncle, i will explain the answer in detailed way.

First of all.
Because it is not the elixir.
Because it needs to adapt to the environment.
Perhaps, you did not 'train' it before you throwing into pond?
You do not really master it's ability?
Because the pond's starved predators waiting to eat it ...
Because of the environment has been seriously occupied by others unwanted microbes ...

Myth 1
Photosynthetic bacteria are omnipotent, not only able to sanitize water, making green algae beautiful, fish will not get sick, the bottom will not form sediment, also do not have to change the pond water ...

Fact 1  
Photosynthetic bacteria is not a magic pill! It's not for emergency use only, they have to be applied frequently on schedule.
Try to imagine how much shrimp food you throw in the pond a day? Compared to the amount of PNSB that you apply- perhaps uncle only apply once twice in a month?Photosynthetic bacteria have to be started to apply at the very begining of algae culturing time ( before seeding baby shrimp). This will ensure photosynthetic bacteria become the dominant bacteria along the time. However, when the pond water turn to higher blackish turbidity, it is already too late to use PNSB to 'save' the pond.


In Our Country Malayia, most of the shrimp breeding pool can be regarded as a closed ecological breeding system, where there is not much new source water exchange frequently. Therefore, we still need proper water exchange when there is too much of the organic matter and nutrient source residue, exceeding the digestibility capacity of aqua-beneficial microbes.
Do you know Photosynthetic bacteria will take how long to win against it's competitor (bad microbes), to become the dominant microbes, when they put together in a 'territory region'?


We have conducted some
in-vitro laboratory samples experiment, they take an average of 7 days to become the dominant bacteria.. Remember, this is only happen in optimized breeding culture.

But when they entering the breeding pool, the PNSB will find it harder!!


 Myth 2
Some microbes company: Our photosynthetic bacteria can work immediately just after you apply, within few hours you can see the water improve.

Fact 2

Every single organisms need to adapt themselves to a new environment. 
Before you apply to pond, the photosynthetic bacteria has been adapted to the nutritional source in the 'selected' medium, at the time when you add it to a completely different source of nutrition environment (breeding pond), photosynthetic bacteria need some time to adapt.  fastest is 12 hours, and slowest can be up to 3 days .

Myth 3
photosynthetic bacteria have powerful digestibility of organics matters, including bait, excrement, unwanted- algae
Fact 3

PNSB has relatively poor digestibility of solid organic matters. They can absorb water soluble in-organic source - carbon and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, resulted from organic material decomposition of other bacteria (Chemo-heterotropic bacteria)\


When the in-organic carbon, nitrogen are accumulated too much, will also cause too much undesirable growth of algae such as dinoflagellates, Euglena. In this case, photosynthetic bacteria can block or delay the process, but too much application of PNSB relatively will also affect the positivre algae growth.Photosynthetic bacteria should be positioned correctly to absorb water ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and algae control.


Myth 4:
photosynthetic bacteria are bacterial nutritious, high in protein, carotene, vitamin ... more than 20 kinds of nutrition the,best fish bait, bla bla bla... ...
Fact4:

Indeed, Photosynthetic bacteria is very nutritious, is an excellent food for protozoa ( Protozoa is an execellant food for baby shrimp/fish) , unless you add in an relatively high, concentrated quantity in fish/shrimp feed, or else the little amount cannot be served as food, but just as food-additive.

Myth 5
Photosynthetic bacteria can evenly dispersed in the water to help improve water quality.
Fact 5 

The photosynthetic bacteria do temporarily disperse in the water to help improve water quality, but it prefers to form anaerobic biofilm growth attached to the the pond's bottom underlying solids, etc sand, 
but when the underlying soil full of other putrefying microbes (bad microbes due to excess food feeding), PNSB will find it very hard to attach, 
Now this is the time, the zeolite powder will help out, support the photosynthetic bacteria as their refuge/house.