A simple way to reduce cost in shrimp culture

A simple way to reduce cost in shrimp culture

Current international shrimp prices are quite low, due to many factors. Import restrictions from China, low cost export of shrimp to USA from South American countries like Ecuador, etc. Moreover cost of feed and Laboure has increased drastically over the last couple of years, while selling price has reduced drastically.  Both these are causing enormous pressure of cost reduction on the aquaculture farmer, especially the shrimp farmer.

As a farmer, you don’t have control on the selling price of shrimp which is largely dependent on international prices and decided by processing units.

However you can control the input costs.

The 3 largest input costs for a shrimp farm are:

• Cost of feed
• Cost of seed
• Cost of aeration

Good quality feed and good quality seed cannot be compromised. However the cost of aeration can be reduced to a large extent – by almost 60% – if proper equipment is used. Diffused aeration is very often found to be 3 times more energy efficient than paddle wheel aerators.

Most large fish and shrimp farms use paddle wheel or similar surface aeration methods. Such aerators spend almost 75% of their energy in moving the water, rather than aeration. They are really water movement devices, although one calls them aerators.

Artificial aeration is efficient only when the surface area available for interaction between the air and water is high, and the time of contact is long. With paddle wheel aerators, the drops of water are quite big – almost 5 to 20 mm big. And the splash down in a very short time.

Compared to this, diffused aeration provides very fine micro bubbles in the water using highly efficient airoxi tube and blowers. The bubbles are about 1 mm in diameter. And they further breakdown into even finer bubbles in salt water used for shrimp culture. In fact the floc in the ponds and nurseries increases the efficiency of aeration, so diffused aeration using blowers and aeration tube increases in efficiency as the culture time increases.

A comparative table of efficiency is given below. As you can see – blower and airoxi tube / aeration tube diffused aeration is highly efficient and the high SOTR (Standard Oxygen Transfer Rate) is almost 3 times that of paddle wheel aerator. This makes the SAE (Standard Aeration Efficiency) very high and translates into saving of electricity cost of almost 60%.

And this is after considering that you use the paddle aerators to move water – but only 1 hour x 4 times a day.

To ensure a good balance, use the paddle wheels only as water moving equipment, and not for aeration. Let the blower and aeration tubes give you the required aeration.

You can even calculate your aeration requirement for your shrimp nursery or shrimp farm using the online aeration calculator on www.airoxi.com/calculator

Comparative performance of AirOxi ^TM Products v/s Paddle Aerator

(Comparison based on market feedback from customers)