Credit for the video and the caption: DO Xuan Hai (Vietnam)
Review: Abdel Rahman El Gamal (Founder of the video channel)
Tilapia culture in Vietnam usually targeted local markets before being exported to a large number in the USA and the European Union.
Red tilapia (Oreochromis spp.) is mainly cultured in floating cages as practiced in the Mekong Delta are made of wooden frames and nets. As the case with cages elsewhere, the ones shown in the video have the advantages of the relatively low capital investment, low operating costs, and easiness of their management.
Almost all cage farmers live on the site for most of the time. Depending on the farm size, the farmers may hire full-time employees, or use part-time workers.
Based on a recent survey, the average dimensions of a cage is 10 m length × 5 m width × 3.5 m depth. Each cage is stocked by about 16,000 fingerlings of an average weight of about 4 g ranging from 1 to 10 g. The growing season takes about 5.5 months, allowing the production of two crops/year. Some cage farmers produce their own fingerlings while others depend on external resources. The harvested fish often has an average weight of about 700 g. During that grow-out period, fish are fed on pelleted feed.
In addition to cleaning the cages in-between the production cycles, fingerlings may be treated before stocking using baths of either salt, potassium permanganate (KMnO4), copper sulfate (CuSO4), or iodine.
In linkage with that, resource-poor farms such as the red tilapia cage farms are often at the risk of experiencing disease outbreaks and subsequent losses of production, income, and assets.
