Do’s and Don’t’s in setting up and managing a fish pond.

1. Avoid areas with problems of domestic, industrial or agricultural pollution.
2. Ensure sufficient supply of clean water.
3. Put up independent water supply
4. Apply complete drying and if indicated liming of sediments.
5. Always stock good quality fingerlings
6. Practice right stocking density according to management capability and environmental conditions.
7. Maintain high quality water supply
8. Always ensure sufficient water exchange.
9. Avoid adding large volumes of new water that may contain pollutants (setting of water in reservoir before use can improve its quality).
10. Set regular water quality monitoring (e.g turbidity, water color, dissolved oxygen, ph, and temperature ) activities.
11. Anticipate adverse weather conditions. Sudden rain or thunderstorms during hot day may present dangers as well as sudden changes in water temperature which may also result in some fish kills.
12. Observe extra precaution to minimize the possibility of dike wash-out flooding and the like.
13.  Apply controlled feeding and feed fish only  with high quality food.
14. Monitor survival rate , biomass , growth and health .
15. Quarantine new stock. Continue reading “Milkfish (Bangus) Production Part 4”

Production strategy

1. Purchase the required fry once every year of operation, especially during the peak season in  May.
2. Start  production in the nursery pond, then the transition pond, formation pond, and finally the rearing pond.
3. Divide the grow-out process into two phases: formation and rearing phases.
4. Allow the fingerlings to grow from a 20g fingerling size to a 50g post-fingerling size in the formation pond using natural food organisms as primary food for the stock.
5. Transfer the post-fingerlings to the rearing pond. Milkfish will grow to the marketable size of 250g in three months at an average growth rate of 2.2g/day . Expect the milkfish to grow bigger during the dry season at an average growth rate of 3g/day.
6. Provide supplementary feeds to sustain fish growth particularly during the wet season when lab-lab and other natural foods in the pond are depleted. A weekly feed conditioning is necessary to determine the attractability of the feed.
7. Efficient feeds should be used. Unattractive feeds results in poor health of the milkfish.
8. Eradicate snail pest called suso and bangungon. These pests destroy lab-lab mat and compete with bangus for lab-lab. Use alternative molluscicide, like tobacco dust, applied at 300-400 kg/ha. Or collect the snails by sweeping or handpicking and burn them with rice straw. Continue reading “Milkfish (Bangus) Production Part 3”