On June 10, 2021, The Indonesia Shrimp Forum Webinar Series entitled “Trend of Shrimp Nursery Technology in Southeast Asia” was conducted and organized by the Indonesian Shrimp Forum in collaboration with Grobest, CJ Indonesia, and US Soybean Export Council (USSEC).
In the first half of the webinar, there was a presentation given by Mr. Oliver Decamp Technical Director Grobest Group with the title “Nursery Food Protocols to Reduce EMS/AHPHD Risks.”
Mr. Oliver divides his talks into three sections. The first section is about introducing Grobest company and how they help farmers through their feed products. The Grobest Company was founded in 1974 and is located in Taiwan and eight other major shrimp-producing countries; one of them is in Indonesia. Grobest main focus is on aquatic nutrition and also disease reduction for high-value warm water fishes and shrimp. They have research development and production facilities located in Taiwan and China. Mr. Oliver further elaborates that Grobest is different from other companies because they focus on what most farmers want, including a higher survival rate and better growth, leading to higher yields and more profitability.
Grobest realizes this by focusing on functional ingredient supply, intestine system care, health improvements, and daily health care. Grobest has developed propriety feed additives, probiotics and premix formula. The company has four feed mixes: Neopower, Biomax, Lactonin, and Fucogen with unique characteristics: (1) attract ability and palatability; (2) immunostimulation; (3) hepatopancreas and gut health; (4) damage repair; (5) and antioxidants. With these different varieties of additives, Grobest can blend these additives according to the benefits expected from the feed production.
In the second section of his presentation, he discussed the problem of early mortality syndrome (EMS) in the early stages of the shrimp cycle and how to overcome the EMS problem via nursery and quality of feed. The premature mortality syndrome can lead to shrimp mortality of 100%, and it hits very early in the life cycle of shrimp. The disease usually affects shrimp in the first 30 days of its growth cycle, i.e., 90 to 130 days.
A nursery is needed to solve the EMS problem because the nursery would allow the farmer to control the production cycle in the first 30 days. The nursery also will enable farmers to monitor the Postlarvae (PL) from the first few days of hatchery until they are transferred to the grow-out ponds. Then, if there is a problem, it can be observed more efficiently, such as destroying shrimps with EMS symptoms. This shows that nurseries have an essential role in controlling the culture in the early stages of the shrimp life cycle. In addition, their high biosecurity makes nurseries great, allowing farmers to grow PL in high density from PL 10-12 in 1 to 4 weeks. The nursery also makes farmer easier to control the entry of pathogens, limit the exposure of early-stage shrimp to less controlled grow out production, makes it easier to control feeding, thus improving overall productivity and quality of the juveniles produced and maintaining the accumulative growth of organic waste that affect vibrio growth.
Nevertheless, there are a few points to consider when running a nursery. First is the design of the nursery phase; second is the water treatment before stocking the nursery; third is the daily management of the nursery like feeding and water quality; and last is how you transfer the shrimps from the nursery to grow-out ponds. When moving PL from hatcheries to a nursery, there are crucial points to consider in the process; for example, in Vietnam, after the PL are delivered from the hatchery, they are kept indoors and go through a primary inspection for pathogens, then the packaging containing the PL are soaked in disinfectant, after that they are transferred into the nursery pond to acclimate to the water temperature before conducting PL count and finally release them into the nursery facility.
Finally, in the last section of his presentation, he gave an example of a Grobest operation in Vietnam, particularly about the advantages of combining nursery and good quality of feed-in culturing shrimp. The nursey diet used in Vietnam has 45% protein, 5% lipid and 50% other overall specs of the diet. This diet was fed to PL SIS broodstock grown in a semi-commercial, experimental nursery setup, with a density of 2,000 pl per cubic meter with a nursery phase of 20 days. So, using this type of breeding and quality feed can result in a fairly good growth rate and ultimately lead to an increase in shrimp production.