The hot season is the most critical stage in aquaculture, and weeks of continuous heat and muggy weather worried many farmers. The rollout of microporous aeration projects is now a relief for crab and shrimp farmers under pressure.
At a pond in the Siheyuan community of Zhuanqiang Town, white PVC pipes run along the edges of the crab pond with a nano aeration tube every 10 metres, and crews were installing the blower units. The moment the power switch closed, fresh oxygen flowed through the tubes into the pond and ripples spread across the surface. "I have farmed crabs for over ten years and never seen this many hot days in a row," said farmer Yu Shengdi, who manages the 8+ mu (0.5+ ha) crab pond alone and normally lives in a shed beside the pond - this year it was too hot to stay in. "If people find the heat unbearable, the crabs feel it even more. The community installing aerators for us all at once is a real life-saver."
"The heat must not delay the aerator installation - it matters a lot to the crab farmers," said one installer. Recently the team has been at the ponds before 5 a.m. while it is still cool, so the units can be running by noon. This year the Siheyuan community invested CNY 240,000 to fit microporous aeration over 800 mu (53 ha) of farming water for the agricultural cooperative, with installation finishing around 5 August and coverage reaching 80% of the farming area.
Shrimp ponds with high stocking densities need aeration even more urgently. Freshwater shrimp farming is the signature industry of Yaxi Town, covering over 10,000 mu. Early one morning at Wangjiachang village, large-scale farmer Shi Jianqing had every microporous aeration unit running in his shrimp ponds, pipes feeding oxygen into the water continuously. His 100+ mu of ponds carry 100,000 fry per mu; in the prolonged heat the water warms up, which can scald or suffocate the shrimp, and water quality deteriorates. "From 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. is when shrimp are most at risk of oxygen shortage; after sunrise the sunlight adds oxygen by itself." As a precaution, Shi installed eight microporous aerators across his ponds and runs them continuously.
District aquaculture experts point out that adequate dissolved oxygen and a good ecological environment increase the appetite of shrimp and crab, improve feed conversion, and help produce larger, higher-yielding animals.
Jiangyin Zhongxin Machinery — one-stop aeration solutions. Contact: +86 180 1341 8091 / +86 180 1341 8097 (WhatsApp / WeChat).
