1983 Small Island, Starting From a Large Farmer

Chapter 432: Stink before death

 Eel factory.

Seeing his brother-in-law's nervous and anxious look, Li Duoyu rushed directly to the pond without asking.

Second brother Li Yaoguo also came over when he saw this. Chen Wenchao immediately said: "Xiaolan, help me collect the fish, and I will go and take a look."

Li Duoyu glared on the spot: "Collect your cloves well, and you don't have to worry about other things."

 Li Duoyu currently has five ponds, totaling about 100 acres in total.

The number of green crab seedlings released per mu is about 2,000. In this more than 100 acres, Li Duoyu released a total of nearly 200,000 blue crab seedlings.

Most of these blue crab seedlings were caught by Zhao Erniu, which earned him nearly 2,000 yuan in total.

The farming area and quantity like his are certainly not as big as those in Taizhou, but they are not small at all.

On the way here, my brother-in-law Zhang Mingsheng blamed himself: "I didn't pay attention for just two days, and so many people died."

Li Duoyu patted him on the shoulder: "It's a trivial matter. No one who engages in breeding will survive."

Li Duoyu slid to the edge of the pond and picked up two green crabs that were not dead, and two more blue crabs that were dying.

The blue crabs at the first pond entrance have been raised for more than two months, and most of them are now as big as three or four taels.

But blue crabs are different. Not only will they kill each other, but when the breeding density is high, they will even eat the same kind while the other is shedding their shells.

 Blue crabs undergo 13 molts in their lifetime, including 6 metamorphosis molts for larvae, 6 growth molts, and 1 reproductive molt.

There used to be a fish farmer in their town who changed his career to raise blue crabs.

 Stink before death.

Seeing that his brother-in-law kept saying that many people died, Li Duoyu frowned and asked, "Is there something wrong with all the five ponds?"

After the fish dies, it will still float on the water. I am here to tell you that I am already dead.

Li Duoyu checked the water body and found that there were no major problems, no algae blooms, and no smelly ponds.

It’s not that blue crabs grow very fast.

As long as the blue crab has undergone this molt, it is considered mature. During this time, the female crab that has not yet mated is called an immature crab.

 Nearly every time they shed their shells, blue crabs can gain 70% of their weight.

 Mainly, when Li Duoyu caught them in the mangroves, they had already experienced a long "metamorphosis" career.

 Because I never saw any dead crabs, I thought I raised them very well and bragged about them everywhere. However, during harvest time, I caught one or two hundred blue crabs in dozens of acres of ponds.

Li Duoyu also carefully observed the pond and found that the situation was really serious. A large number of green crabs appeared around the pond.

 Some of them had eight claws pointing upwards, and looked dead. Li Duoyu's intuition told Li Duoyu that the blue crabs at the entrance of the two ponds were probably doomed.

Each of the living blue crabs by the pond looked sickly, and some had their feet propped up, as if they didn't dare to touch the water.

In the form of water fleas, they have to go through six stages of growth before they become "air seedlings", which are big-eyed larvae.

 The big-eyed larvae will grow into crabs only after "metamorphosis".

“It feels like each one is worth three or four taels. Even if it’s calculated as fifty cents per catty, it’s still a loss of several thousand.”

 But those dead crabs really stink. Li Duoyu found that those dying blue crabs also had a stink.

 When blue crabs first hatch, they are just like water fleas. They are very small and cannot be seen with the naked eye unless you look carefully.

“That’s not the case. The two people who had the problem were the two we started with.”

 The crab shells are already over ten centimeters wide, and some of them grow faster, even weighing more than half a catty.

 For farmers, seeing dead crabs is normal, but not seeing dead crabs for a long time is a horror.

In addition, they are bottom-dwelling. After death, they will rot directly below. In many cases, even if they are all dead, you will not know it.

Li Yaoguo, who came with me, looked at the whole pond of dead crabs and felt heartbroken.

 “A lot of people died.”

When they arrived at the first pond, Li Duoyu found his father rowing a bamboo raft on the side of the pond and holding a dip net in one hand to catch the dead crabs.

In aquaculture, the breeding cycle of blue crabs is relatively short, from juvenile crabs to adult crabs, which takes about one hundred days.

"As long as the whole army is not wiped out, it will be fine." Li Duoyu felt a little relieved. If there was no collective problem, it should not be a problem with the water body. It might be other reasons.

Li Duoyu sighed. In fact, he wanted to tell his brother that you were too conservative. How could you only die a few thousand? It should be far more than this number.

Green crabs are notoriously hard to see even if they are dead.

Looking at the green crab that was propped up and blowing bubbles, Li Duoyu roughly guessed what the problem was.

“There are so many fish, at least several thousand of them must have died in this pond.”

"Um."

 There were two wooden barrels placed on the bamboo raft, which seemed to be fully filled.

 Normally, blue crabs are not seen in broad daylight, but unexpectedly, they also climb up the **** of the shore during the day.

However, if a large number of dead crabs suddenly appear like this, it means that the situation is very serious and preparations must be made to clear the pond.

Li Duoyu suddenly remembered the self-deprecation of some blue crab farmers: It was a good thing to still see dead crabs, at least it proved that there were still crabs in the crab pond that were not dead.

Most of the blue crabs that have died so far have already molted eleven or two times, and many are about to start reproductive molting.

　　I opened its crab cover on the spot, and sure enough, there was a lot of fluid inside.

 Normally, the liquid is clear and sweet, but this liquid is yellow and smelly, which means you are sick at first glance.

After Li Duoyu broke off the crab claws, light yellow liquid also flowed out, and the crab gills had turned black.

 Yellow water disease + black cheek disease!

  If you suffer from enteritis or something like that, Li Duoyu can also be treated with Chinese herbal medicine.

 But green crabs suffer from these two diseases at the same time, and even the gods can’t solve them.

Li Duoyu is a little hard to understand. This time blue crab farming is almost done according to the highest standards.

 In terms of feed, there is definitely no problem. We use the best snails and shellfish.

 There seems to be no problem with the water quality. What went wrong in the process, which led to the massive death of blue crabs?

Li Duoyu knows what kind of disease he is suffering from, but what caused it is not yet known, so he can only investigate one by one.

Li Duoyu asked: "Brother-in-law, have you changed the water recently?" Zhang Mingsheng said: "Yes, as you said, change it every three days, one-third each time."

That’s weird?

 If you change the water at this frequency, there will definitely be no problem with the water quality. There is no reason why this should happen.

 In the past, when encountering problems like this that even he couldn't solve, he had to call in crab experts, but in this day and age, where are the experts?

 He is the expert.

Li Duoyu glanced at Lao Li, who was still fishing for dead crabs, and asked suddenly: "Brother-in-law, who is raising blue crabs these days?"

　　“I’ve been raised by my dad lately.”

Li Duoyu was stunned for a moment. He didn't know why, but he had an intuition that the problem might lie with his father.

He took a long shovel and went to the area where shellfish feed was often fed to the pond, and shoveled some silt from the bottom up.

 He found that the mud was very smelly and there were many insects crawling on it. Most importantly, he found some small fish that had been eaten until only their heads were left.

Li Duoyu briefly sorted it out and roughly knew where the problem lay.

Although my brother-in-law has been changing the water all the time, and because there are mangroves, the water body seems to be fine, but there is something wrong at the bottom.

 To raise fish, raise water first.

 Before you can raise crabs, you must first raise the bottom.

 After all, crabs are bottom-dwelling creatures. Once there is a problem below, it will be useless no matter how good the water above is.

 It is estimated that this situation has been going on for a long time. Coupled with the recent large temperature difference, the resistance of green crabs has weakened, and this has caused a big outbreak.

At this time, Lao Li came over on a bamboo raft. He fished out a whole bucket of dead crabs and looked at Li Duoyu with a little anger.

“If you don’t raise blue crabs well, they will just run around all day long. Look how much money you will lose if so many crabs die.”

 Li Duoyu scratched his head.

“Dad, failure is the mother of success. I’m not a fairy. If I succeed regardless of how I raise it, others will probably regard me as a monster.”

 Old Li snorted coldly.

"Then you should raise less. There is no need to raise so much."

 “Hey hey hey.”

 After Li Duoyu returned to the shore, his second brother Li Yaoguo asked: "Have you found the reason?"

 Li Duoyu shook his head and did not tell everyone about the fact that he found small fish feed in the food.

“I really don’t understand this time. Next, let Dad stop feeding the blue crabs. Let me feed them myself and see if I can find out the reason.”

 Second brother Li Yaoguo sighed. He found that breeding was really difficult.

 Even if the kelp is the best to be raised, it can only be raised with many fishes and meets the standards for export.

 Other villages in the town are also in average condition and cannot even meet export standards.

However, compared with blue crab and eel farming, kelp farming is simply a magical project, except for the time of planting seedlings and harvesting kelp, which requires a lot of labor.

The rest of the time period is really worry -free, not to do it like eels and blue crabs.

The scene in front of him reminded him of the time when he caught half a pond of eel fry some time ago.

Li Yaoguo couldn't help but ask: "There are many fish, which one is easier to raise, eels or blue crabs?"

Li Duoyu thought about it for a while and replied: "If eels have a complete set of mature breeding techniques, then eels would be easier to raise."

Li Yaoguo was surprised: "What if blue crabs also have a complete set of mature breeding technologies?"

Li Duoyu smiled.

 “This thing is hard to talk about. I’m not sure about it anyway.”

 “Not sure about eels?”

Li Duoyu nodded: "Because the blue crabs need to shed their shells, there are too many uncontrollable factors."

In the previous life, there were eel farmers who had already controlled the mortality rate of eels to less than one percent, but even if they were farmers who knew how to raise blue crabs, no one would dare to brag about this.

This time Li Duoyu invested a total of 200,000 green crabs. In the final harvest, if there were 20,000 green crabs, he would be quite satisfied.

Brother-in-law Zhang Mingsheng frowned. He built the pond and owns shares in the blue crabs, so he has been paying close attention to these blue crabs.

 Every week he puts out the ground cage to check the latest changes in blue crabs. It can be said that he is very excited every time he checks.

 Because the blue crabs will grow bigger every time, he is really happy to see the green crabs grow to half a catty in less than two months.

Unexpectedly, it has only been a few days and it has become like this. He also blames himself very much because he has been busy with the sixth pond for the past few days and neglected it.

“If there are so many fish and blue crabs, and the death rate is so high, wouldn’t we lose money if we build this dike?”

Li Duoyu smiled and said: "If you lose money, you won't lose money. Once the pond is built, it will be a huge profit. Besides, our pond is not only used to raise blue crabs, but we can also use it to raise some shrimps."

When they heard about shrimp farming, their second brother Li Yaoguo and brother-in-law Zhang Mingsheng’s eyes widened.

 Shrimp is definitely a luxury item these days. A pound of blue crabs only costs one yuan, but a pound of shrimp can be sold for at least four or five yuan.

Li Yaoguo was surprised and said: "There are many fish, do you know how to raise shrimps?"

Li Duoyu scratched his head, then stretched out his little finger: "I'm not talented, I only know a little bit."

Li Yaoguo is somewhat used to it now. Every time Li Duoyu says he knows a little bit, it must be a lie.

Thinking of the fact that a large area would die every time they were raised, Li Yaoguo couldn’t help but ask: “There are many fish, which is easier to raise, shrimps or blue crabs?”

Li Duoyu thought carefully: "Theoretically speaking, shrimps should be easier to raise than blue crabs."

 “How about compared with eels?”

Li Duoyu frowned and said, "For me personally, eels are probably the best to raise."

"Understood."

 (End of this chapter)