Shrimp farming possible in freshwater: Dr Y Bedajit
Source: Chronicle News Service / Sagolsem Bigyan

Imphal, October 22 2022: Though shrimps are found mostly in salt water, it can be reared in freshwater and taken up as a profitable farming practice, said Central Agricultural University (CAU) deputy director (instruction) Dr Y Bedajit.

Speaking to The People's Chronicle, Dr Bedajit explained that Tiger Shrimp and Whiteleg Shrimp are some varieties of salt water shrimps.

They need salt water to lay eggs, hatch and grow.

However, they can now be cultivated in freshwater and farmers across the country are exporting tonnes of freshwater shrimps to other countries every year.

Shrimp is a type of shellfish and this type of fishes include crabs, mussels and lobster.

Most of the shrimp farming is practiced in coastal areas but today it is being taken up in interior states such as Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Bihar and Tripura.

Even though farmers in coastal states are involved in shrimp farming, they are using freshwater though hatching process is done in hatcheries located in beaches using seawater.

From there, small amount of freshwater is added to the pond daily to facilitate gradual change of habitat from saltwater to freshwater.

Once the young shrimp get acclimatised to freshwater, they are sold to farmers for freshwater farming.

As such, farmers in the state can also cultivate shrimp in freshwater by buying young shrimps from these coastal farms, he said.

The pond should be dug at such a location where the soil is a mixture of sand and clay or soil with larger sand contents.

The area can be anywhere between one-tenth of a hectare to one hectare while the depth should be 1.3 to 1.5 metre.

Placing sand or small pebbles on the pond bed is more favourable for the shrimps.

In the preparation period, the pond should be treated with 5000 to 7000 kg of cow faeces and 200 to 500 kg of lime per hectare.

Water pH value testing is recommended before this treatment to ascertain the right amount of manure and lime.

The main reason for treatment is to increase the soil fertility and raise the pH value since shrimps can easily shed their outer shells in alkaline/base water and they grow more when they shed their outer shells, Dr Bedajit explained.

He further said that three to four weeks old shrimps can be transferred to the pond at the rate of 20,000 to 50,000 shrimps per hectare.

Sometimes, the population can be raised to as much as 1.5 lakh per hectare based on certain conditions and target.

The minimum cultivation period of shrimps is seven to eight months.

At the time of shedding outer shells, shrimps are weak and in order to prevent other healthy shrimps from eating them, one should put in place broken pots, bamboo pipes and bamboo branches where they could hide from their predators.

If a farmer wants to cultivate shrimps, they cannot mix it with fish species that habitat in the lower level of pond, he added.

Average feeding proportion should be 10 per cent of the body weight in the initial stage and then reduce it to 2 to 3 per cent gradually.

Using especially designed shrimp feeds are more favourable for better growth though the farmers can always make their own feeds.

The average production capacity per hectare after six to eight months is 750 to 1500 kg.

Shrimps are popular and high cost food items and they can be exported to different countries, he added.

(This article has been written under Media Fellowship Programme in Scientific Journalism sponsored by Public Relation and Media Management (PRMM) Cell of the Central Agricultural University (CAU) Imphal.

For further information related with this article, please contact Dr Indira Thounaojam,
Information and Publicity Officer,
PRMM Cell, CAU through
email id: [email protected]) .

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