CATDOLL : CATDOLL: How to raise eels?

Yellow eel, also known as eel, has high nutritional value and can be used as a top delicacy. It is in great demand in the market and is expensive. You can use the vacant land in front of or behind your house to build a pond for artificial breeding. The specific measures are as follows:

1. Build a pond. Build a breeding pond in a sunny place with a certain water source and solid soil. There are three types of breeding ponds: mud ground, cement ground and mud structure surrounded by bricks. For a large breeding farm, cement pond is the best. The area can be 10-15 square meters and the depth can be 0.8-1 meter. Set up small holes on the wall of the pond and lay 30 cm of pond mud in the pond to facilitate eels to dig holes and rest. Store 10-15 cm of water. Set up water inlets and outlets on the water surface and use polyethylene fine nets to prevent escape. Use half of the area of ​​the pond surface to plant arrowhead mushrooms or cultivate duckweed and water hyacinth aquatic plants as shade for eels to hide and rest. The wall of the eel breeding pond should be at least 30 cm above the water surface to prevent eels from escaping when washed by rainwater.

2. Stocking. April to August is the spawning season for eels, and May to June is the peak season. During the spawning period, go to the place where the eels live to find fish eggs, use gauze to scoop out fertilized eggs or seedlings, and then put the fish eggs into a small pond or clay pot for hatching and seedling raising. Feed the seedlings with egg yolks, minced meat, bran powder, etc. When they grow to a tail weight of 20 grams in the same year or the next year, they can be put into a large pond for breeding. In addition, you can also buy young fish in the market and put them into the pond so that the turnover is faster. The best time to release eels is early spring. By October, the large eels can exceed 150 grams, and the small ones are also about 100 grams. The size of eels should be 30-40 per kilogram. Avoid mixing large and small eels to avoid killing or swallowing each other. 1-2.5 kilograms can be raised per square meter. Eels have a strong ability to mate and reproduce on their own. Generally, there is no need to add more fry after the first stocking, but protection and management must be strengthened.

3. Feeding. Yellow eel likes to eat live food and is very greedy. For artificial breeding of yellow eel, earthworms, mussel meat, etc. are all good feeds. You can also use lights to lure flying insects into the pond, or use pig blood to attract flies to lay eggs and maggots as feed. Earthworms are the best, and every 7-8 earthworms can increase eel meat by 1 gram. Yellow eel is very selective about food. After being fed with a kind of food for a long time, it is difficult to change its eating habits in a short period of time. Therefore, when changing the type of feed, you must not feed it in the first 2-3 days, so that it will eat new food because of hunger. Yellow eel is used to hiding during the day and coming out at night. Therefore, when it is first released, the time for feeding should be 4-5 pm every day, or before dark in the evening, and then the feeding time should be advanced day by day. After a period of training, you can feed it at 9 am or 2 pm every day. You can also use the method of feeding every other day to increase its food intake. The bait can be thrown on a bait table made of a wooden frame or polyethylene mesh. The baiting location should be fixed and the amount of bait should be 6-7% of the fish body weight. On the second day after feeding, fresh water should be replaced to keep the water in the pond fresh and rich in dissolved oxygen.

4. Management. The eel grows very slowly, and the suitable water temperature is 15-28℃. When the water temperature is lower than 15℃, the eel's feeding is affected. When the water temperature is lower than 10℃, the eel stops feeding completely and enters a hibernation state. When the water temperature exceeds 28℃, the eel's feeding amount will also decrease. At this time, measures should be taken to lower the water temperature. The eel is in its peak growth season from spring to winter. Management should be strengthened, and the eel should be fed enough and properly, at regular intervals and quantitatively, so that the eel can grow faster. Leftover bait should be removed in time. Sufficient feed must be fed before winter. After winter, the pond water must be drained and covered with straw. The thickness should be enough to prevent the eel from suffocating to death, so as to protect the pond room and prevent the eel from freezing to death due to low temperature. Rehydrate in time after spring.

5. Diseases. Prevention and control by natural enemies. During the growth period of eels, especially during the newly released fry and the breeding season of eels, ducks must not be allowed to enter the pond to prey on them. In summer, sometimes due to high temperatures, eels will suffer from heat stroke and coma. At this time, they should be replaced with cool water or shaded to cool down, and then fed with fresh clam meat. The main disease of eels is the scaly disease, the symptom of which is the appearance of yellow round spots the size of soybeans on the back of the eels. Treatment method: You can often release some toads (toads) in the pond. Since the toad venom on the toad has preventive and curative effects, it can reduce the incidence of the disease. If you find that the disease has already occurred, you can use the skinned head of the toad, tie it with a rope and drag it back and forth in the pond several times. The disease can be eliminated within 1-2 days.

Habitat

Yellow eel is a tropical and warm temperate fish, a bottom-dwelling fish with strong adaptability. It lives at the bottom of the water body, mainly in muddy waters such as rice fields, lakes, ponds, rivers and ditches, and even in swamps, flooded fields or wetlands. It likes to live in caves. The length of the yellow eel cave is about 3 times the length of the body, and the cave is curved and cross-shaped. Each cave usually has more than two caves. The exit of the cave is often close to the water surface so that it can stick its head out to breathe air.

Living habits

During the day, the eel likes to burrow in humus-rich mud or live in the crevices of rocks on the bank with water. It rarely moves during the day and comes out of its burrow at night to look for food. It is nocturnal, and the skin folds in its mouth can be used for breathing, so it can breathe air directly. In winter and dry seasons, it will dig a burrow 1-2 meters deep underground, where several fish live together. Its gills are not well developed, but it uses the inner wall of its mouth and throat as an auxiliary organ for breathing, so it can breathe air directly; it can survive even when the oxygen content in the water is very poor. After escaping the water, as long as the skin is kept moist, it will not die within a few days.

The eel is a carnivorous and ferocious fish that mostly goes out to feed at night. It can prey on various small animals, such as insects and their larvae, as well as frogs, tadpoles and small fish. The eel feeds mostly by sucking. Whenever it feels a small animal near its mouth, it opens its mouth and sucks. It is an omnivorous fish that feeds on various small animals. It is greedy and eats most vigorously in summer. It can go without food for a long time in cold seasons without dying.

Reproduction method

The eel's reproductive season is from June to August. In its individual development, it has the characteristics of sex reversal, that is, it is female from the embryonic stage to the first sexual maturity (that is, the gonads of individuals with a body length of less than 35 cm are all ovaries); after spawning, the ovaries gradually turn into testes; when the body length is 36-48 cm, the sex is partially reversed, and the male and female individuals are almost equal; those that grow to more than 53 cm are mostly testes. The eel lays eggs near the entrance of its burrow. Before spawning, it spits out foam from its mouth to form a nest. The fertilized eggs develop on the water surface in the foam with the help of the buoyancy of the foam. Both male and female fish have the habit of protecting the nest.

The eggs are large, about 2-4 mm in diameter, golden yellow, and elastic. When spawning, the adult fish spits out foam, which accumulates in a mass at the entrance of the cave. The number of eggs is small, and they are not laid in the foam, but in the nest. The young fish can hatch in about 7-8 days. The gonads are well developed on the left side, and degenerate on the right side. There is a phenomenon of sexual reversal. The gonads of individuals with a body length of less than 200 mm are all ovaries; the sex reversal begins at about 220 mm in body length; when the body length is 360-380 mm, the male and female individuals are almost equal; those under 360 mm are mostly ovaries; those over 380 mm are mostly testes; those that grow to more than 530 mm are all testes. Yellow eels are females from the embryonic stage to maturity and can only lay eggs; after spawning, the ovaries gradually turn into testes, and then produce sperm. The number of eggs is small, and a female with a body length of 500 mm can carry 500-1,000 eggs, which are laid in batches. The newly hatched fry have pectoral fins, which are covered with blood vessels and constantly flap, becoming the fry's respiratory organs. The fins degenerate as they grow a little. The fry can only grow to less than 200 mm in the first year, and the fish reach sexual maturity at the age of 2 winters, with a body length of about 340 mm.