CATDOLL : CATDOLL: How do eels survive?

Eel belongs to the order Synbranchidae, family Synbranchidae, genus Monopterus. It is also called yellow eel, eel, Luo eel, snake fish, blood eel, Chang fish, and long fish (in northern Jiangsu). It is a general term for about 15 species of slender eel-shaped fish in the order Synbranchidae. There are two types of eels distributed in my country, one is the common yellow eel, and the other is the mountain yellow eel, which are distributed in Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Chongqing, Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, Henan and other places.

It lives in mud caves and rock crevices near water, coming out in summer and hiding in caves in November and December.

The eel is an omnivorous fish that mainly feeds on animals.

Under natural conditions, they mainly feed on small fish, shrimps, small river clams, small snails, insects, and large zooplankton such as cladocerans, copepods, rotifers, etc., and swallow small frogs and tadpoles, and sometimes eat some duckweed, wild rice, filamentous algae, etc. In artificial breeding of eels, they should be fed with earthworms, maggots, small fish and shrimps, animal offal, slaughter scraps, compound feed, and fresh feed such as bran, rice, rice bran, bean cake, tofu dregs, and melon and fruit peels, and they should not be fed with rotten and spoiled feed. It is best to crush animal feed and plant feed and mix them into granular feed for feeding. The size of the granules depends on the size of the eel, and it is generally appropriate to swallow it in one bite. The eel feeds by sipping and sucking, and swallows the food into the stomach without chewing. When encountering relatively large food, the eel often bites the food by rotating its body. During the peak feeding season for eels, if there is a shortage of feed, eels will also eat eels that are smaller than themselves. Therefore, when stocking, you should choose eels of the same size and avoid mixing eels of different sizes.

The eel is quite strict in choosing bait. After being fed with the same bait for a long time, it is difficult to change its original feeding habits. Therefore, it is necessary to do a good job of taming the eel in the early stage of breeding, that is, to feed it with mixed feed with a wide source, low price, long supply time and high meat increase rate.

1 Diet

The eel is a carnivorous and ferocious fish that likes to eat fresh live bait. Under natural conditions, it mainly preys on earthworms, tadpoles, small fish, shrimps, young frogs, grasshoppers that fall into the water, maggots and other aquatic and terrestrial insects, and also eats large zooplankton such as cladocerans and copepods.

2 Feeding method

As the yellow eel has deteriorated vision and is active at night, it mainly relies on its sense of smell to find food. When food approaches its mouth, it opens its mouth and sucks the food into its mouth, so the yellow eel always makes a "slurping" sound when eating. The yellow eel mainly eats by gnawing, swallowing food without chewing. When encountering a large animal, it bites it first, and then rotates its body to bite off the food one by one, and then swallows it. The yellow eel eats quickly, and after eating, it quickly retracts its tail into the original hole. In the case of insufficient feed, the yellow eel has the habit of cannibalism. The yellow eel is resistant to hunger and will not die even if it does not eat for a long time. In the summer when it is active, although the food intake is large and it can still tolerate hunger, its weight will be significantly reduced. Once the yellow eel gets used to a certain bait, it is difficult to change.

3 Bait source

The eel's favorite food mainly includes earthworms, maggots and mealworms. They can be cultivated by using small pieces of scattered wasteland, corners of courtyards and abandoned ditches and ponds, applying livestock and poultry manure, using the scraps of slaughterhouses, supplemented with bran, dregs, etc. At the same time, terrestrial animal feeds are cultivated, mainly eels and earthworms, so that the three animal feeds such as earthworms, maggots and mealworms account for more than 60% of the total feed. In addition, fish, shrimp, snails, clams, mussels and tadpoles can all be used as feed for eels. Crucian carp, loach, toads, etc. can be raised in the early spring when the eel pond is idle, and used as live bait for eels; in addition, according to local resource conditions, the above live feeds can be collected, processed, and earthworms or earthworm enzymes can be added as attractants to feed eels; large zooplankton such as water fleas and rotifers can also be caught and directly thrown into the eel pond. In addition, some melons, beans and other plants are planted on the eel breeding pond to provide shade and reduce temperature, and breed insects. Black light is hung above the eel pond to attract insects into the pond for the eels to prey on. In addition to the above feed sources, the leftovers of livestock and poultry, such as blood and internal organs, are collected, rinsed, chopped or minced, and cooked before feeding the eels; silkworm pupae are purchased from the silk reeling factory, dried and thrown into the eel pond to feed the eels; in addition, eel compound feed can also be fed to the eels. However, these feeds must be added with attractants, and they can be fed to the eels by gradually attracting them to eat.

4 Bait acclimation

Fresh mussel meat was selected, frozen, and processed into minced meat using a 6 mm die meat grinder. The minced meat was mixed with clean water and evenly sprinkled in the eel pond from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. every day. The feeding amount was controlled within 1% of the total weight of the eel fry. This feeding amount is far lower than the satiation amount of the eel, so the eel is always in a hungry state, which is convenient for establishing the conditioned reflex of concentrated feeding of the eel group.

After 3 days, it was observed that the eels were eating vigorously, so they were fed at fixed points. Generally, 4-6 points were set up for every 20 m2. Feeding was continued for 2 days, and the feeding amount was still 1% of the total weight of the eel fry. At this time, the eels could basically finish eating within 3 minutes. On the 6th day, they were fed with artificial compound bait. When feeding, they were directly scattered in the fixed feeding area, and the feeding amount was increased to 2% of the total weight of the eel fry. Feed once every day from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., and pay special attention to the feeding amount that should be eaten within 15 minutes to improve feed utilization.

5 Preparation of artificial bait for yellow mullet

The feed produced by general feed factories cannot be fed directly and must be prepared first. Add 65% of the special feed for yellow eels to 35% of fresh river clam meat slurry (processed by a 3-4 mm die hole meat grinder), mix it into a dough by hand or with a blender, and then use a 3-4 mm die hole meat grinder to press it into a soft strip bait with a diameter of about 3-4 mm and a length of 3-4 cm. It can be fed after being slightly air-dried. The feeding effect of the bait prepared in this way is extremely ideal. In large-scale farming with soil, the feed coefficient is about 2, and in large-scale farming without soil and flowing water, the feed coefficient is only 2-5.

Small fish and shrimp, crickets, earthworms, various insects, grasshoppers, katydids, chicken and duck intestines.

It lives in ponds, streams, rice fields, etc., often hiding in mud holes or cracks in rocks. It comes out at night to look for food. It has strong adaptability and can survive in rivers, lakes, ditches and rice fields. During the day, it likes to dig holes in humus-rich mud or live in burrows in rock crevices near banks. It rarely moves during the day and comes out of its holes to look for food at night. Its gills are not well developed, but it uses the inner wall of the mouth and throat as an auxiliary breathing organ, and can breathe air directly; it can survive when the oxygen content in the water is very poor. After coming out of the water, as long as the skin is kept moist, it will not die within a few days. The yellow eel is an omnivorous fish that feeds on various small animals. It is greedy and eats most vigorously in summer. In cold seasons, it can go without food for a long time without dying.