Studying of food selection for mantis shrimp (Harpiosquilla raphidae Fabricius, 1798) cage culture in ponds in Ben Tre province
Abstract
The meet of mantis shrimp is good taste, delicious, highly nutritious, favourable to people. In order to meet the demand, people mainly exploite it from the wild, but natural Mantis shrimp resources have been decreased steadily; Neverthless, there has not many research of Mantis shrimp culture been done. This paper introduces somes results of food selection research for cage culture conducted in pond in Ben Tre Province. The research was conducted with 5 food trials, including Trial 1 using trash fish and crustaceans, Trial 2 using trash fish and molluscs, Trial 3 using crustaceans and molluscs, Trial 4 using trash fish, crustaceans and molluscs, and Trial 5 using tiger shrimp industrial food. Each trial has 40 cages, stocking one mantis shrimp specimen. The study was conducted for 3 replications, a total number of six hundress cages were used. The ratio of each food in each trial was the same, the trial of two different food items shared 50% for each, and 33.3% for each in the trial of 3 food items. The experiment prolonged for two months, started in March, 2022, using mantis seeds of mean weight of 48 g/speciment. At the end of the experiment, the mean weight of mantis in Trial 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 was 165, 166, 165, 182 and 70 (g/speciment), respectively. The survivor rates of mantis in the Trial 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 were 85.8, 81.7, 83.3, 86.7 and 64.2(%), respectively. The results showed that, tiger shrimp pallet food was not suitable for Mantis shrimp; The Trial 4 with trash fish, crustaceans and molluscs gave the best survival rate, growth, FCR and economic profit.
