PRODUCTION OF ARTEMIA IN SALT PONDS
From: Sandra Oliveira Almeida sandraalmeida@netvisao.pt
To: Artemia Characterization artemia-l@email.sparklist.com
Sent: 16 January 2003
QUESTION:
I'm studying Artemia, and I got somewhat confused
when I searched the internet; apparently there are production in saltponds,
in tanks, and solar saltponds...; can someone explain me how many procedures
are there to produce Artemia, and what are the differences?
Sandra
Almeida
e-mail :
sandraalmeida@netvisao.pt
*****************
comments 1:
Not in quantity of salt, but in the quality of this
salt, because the Artemia "clean" the saltponds of organic matter.
Sergio
Ortiz
e-mail :
sortiz@isysa.com.mx
*****************
comments 2:
1) There is a difference in production both of salt
and Artemia biomass in ponds containing both BUT this depends a lot on the
type of saltwork you are working in.
As some persons already remarked Artemia remove organic debris from the salt
water thus influencing viscosity which in turn enhances evaporation and
precipitation. Summarizing, you end up with more and better salt.
In some salt works there is however competition between salt production and
Artemia production. This is especially true in the seasonal saltworks of
Asia. You need a certain quantity of water
(how much you need will depend a lot on the ambient temperatures) having a
certain salinity. The water and thus salt is removed from your "salt
production". In large salt areas these quantities probably can be
ignored.
2) You have biomass and you have cysts. It is not clear to me where the
interest lies but again these two products will compete for resources. If
you harvest biomass you lower the number of females. Theoretically this
might in some cases increase cyst production (by lowering the number you
increase the amount of food per female, which in turn will lead to bigger
broodsacks) but in practice it usually lowers your cyst production.
3) As for prices.this depends on what quantity/quality you need + there are
big differences between years.
Peter Baert
e-mail:
p_baert@yahoo.co.uk
***************
comments 3:
My name is Hector Teruel and I am working for many
years in Artemia production and its use as biological control in the solar
salt operation big scale. My formation on this subject started since 1976
with Dr. Patrick Sorgeloos from the Artemia Reference Center, where I
work many times between 1978 and 1989, during the Post graduates course
on Artemia. I work eventually as UNIDO Expert in Artemia and Salt
Production.Recently I back from Ghana,West Africa, where the Government
wants to built a big Salt Industry in the Country.
My opinion on your request is that Artemia production in Solar salt
operation is limited in that ponds where the salinity avoid the presence of
predator. Normally this is over 120 ppt. I remember in the Bandar Abbas
region in Persian Gulf, Iran, the population of the Urmia strain, developed
very well in less than 80 ppt. This is rare in the world.
The food in this ponds are limited and normally occurs phytoplankton blooms
that decay quickly. But the problem is that you cannot apply fertilizer in
excess to develop food because the fragile equilibrium between the pond
bottom (Benthos) and the water column. We have to be carefully for the
danger of Cocochloris elabens or other muscilaginose microalga that can
destroy all the salt production in the crystallizer area. Then the Artemia
production in Salt Operation should be limited to produce 2-3 kg by ha/day
of concentrator ponds. If you have a salt complex with 100 ha of this
intermediate salinity ponds, you will capable to produce around 300 Kg/day.
But if you want to produce Artemia in a Artemia farm, then you can produce
50 Kg/ha/day with no problems.
Actually I’m working as manager in a shrimp farm, intensive way, to
produce 10,000 Kg/ha/harvest of Penaeus vannamei. In the design we added
as we called sedimentation and bioclarification ponds to increase the
water quality of all the exchange water in the farm, daily.
The bioclarification ponds will be filled with Artemia metanauplii to
produce a biomass of around 2,000 Kg in 20 days, in a 0.5 ha pond.
Hector Teruel
e-mail: hectorteruel@hotmail.com
****************
comments 4 :
In summary there are two types of products, cysts and
biomass.
Cysts are the eggs which normally are sold as a dried
and canned product. Sometimes however the cysts are also sold as a wet
product (mixed with salt). The latter is only possible if the places where
the cysts are used (mainly the hatcheries) are close to the sites where the
cysts are produced as you can not store wet cysts for a very long time.
Cysts are either wild harvested (main sources is the Great Salt Lake in the
USA but there are other natural populations in salt lakes) or cultured.
Cultures are usually inside saltfarms.
You have big farms where salt production is year
round and Artemia is some kind of by-product. Usually yields per ha in such
systems are low and decline with time (ie we could only harvest 20kkg DW in
a 1000ha salt work two years after introduction). However Artemia are also
important as they play a role in the biotic system in these farms. They
clean water as they ingest all kinds of small particles and pack them in
their faecal pellets which sink to the bottom. I do not completely agree
with Hector where he says such ponds can not be fertilized. They can be
fertilized but 1) you only should do that to manipulate algae to for
instance create bottom algae to seal the bottom 2) know what you are doing
as indeed an excess of for instance phosphor can cause blooms of bad algae
3) realize you are not going to increase your Artemia production
tremendously. Finally Artemia in such ponds can be natural populations but
sometimes the species is also introduced to the ponds.
Personally I think however if you target cysts you
best make separate culture units existing of a number of small ponds
including a fertilizer pond. There exist a number of different culture
techniques (flow-through, static systems, multi-cycle) and combinations of
these techniques. Most of them are summarized in the FAO manual published by
the Artemia Reference center. A few new techniques are described in separate
publications you can also get from that institute. Yields are high but the
exact quantities depend on a lot of factors beside your culture system (ie
climate, algae present, predator type etc.). In Vietnam where this system is
best developed animals are cultured in 60 to 80ppt and yields range from a
low 80 tot a high 160 kg WW/ha.
Theoretically you can also set-up culture systems in
tanks to produce cysts but this is not very cost effective.
Besides cysts you can also culture biomass = the
animals. This product is used as direct food or as an ingredient in
shrimp/fish feeds. It can be either life, frozen, dried, ensiled,
freeze-dried, ... The biomass can be cultured in the same systems as
described for cysts (but your cyst yields go down if you harvest biomass!).
Super intensive systems also exist though, in which biomass is cultured in
small ponds or tanks getting water from fertilizer ponds, waste water
concentrators from shrimp or fish farms. In some places they even culture
biomass in tanks using finely ground agricultural waste products as food.
There exists a lot of literature on this.
Peter
Baert
e-mail :
p_baert@yahoo.co.uk