A good habitat is an essential factor for all the animals in the world as well as fishes. Fishes like all other rearing or cultured animals require some basic essentials and better and suitable environment for living is one of the most important requirement to continue life smoothly which is ultimately increase the biomass and finally turned into good production or yield. In aquaculture, site selection is a vital consideration before starting culture. One must consider the physico-chemical characteristics of proposed site for culture. Some other factor like socio-economic factors needs also to be considered while selecting spot. However a place with the following characters under different headings may consider suitable for aquaculture-
- Soil of selected place must have enough water holding capacity, that is the soil will able to hold enough water into the water body.
- Loamy or clay-loamy soil is considered good and productive for aquaculture.
- Red soil area should not be selected, because of excess turbidity especially during rainy season.
- Water body should be of square or rectangular shaped.
- Area of the culture water body should be of such that proper and easy management may be possible.
- Dyke must be high and strong enough to prevent the flood water from entering into the water body.
- Selected place must receive direct sunlight for 7-8 hours in a day.
- In case of freshwater prawn culture, there must be less than 15 cm bottom mud in the water body.
- Communication system should be good enough to carry different inputs and yield and other necessities during culture.
- Electricity facilities should be available in the culture place.
- Fish market/s needs to be present within short distance. It will be very much beneficial through low-cost transportation and easy selling.
- All fishing inputs must be available in the selected region.
- Good demand of cultured fisheries item/s in the selected areas is an important consideration during site selection.
- Selected site or place should free from risk of flooding and drought during rainy and summer season respectively.
- If selected spot is chosen nearer to locality, it would be better because security can be provided more easily than a far distance site from locality.
An intelligent culture water body operator must consider the above factors while selecting a proper site for culture. If the site for aquaculture is not selected properly, production will not be satisfactory.
DoF (Department of Fisheries), 2002. Mixed Carp Culture (in Bengali), Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock, Dhaka, pp. 4-5.
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