Floating cages as an experimental tool for shrimp culture studies: first attempts to check their reliability

The first aim of this study was to evaluate on a technical basis the rearing of shrimps in floating cages set up in earthen ponds. Shrimps reared in and outside the cages presented comparable growths and survival rates. Then it was concluded that shrimp culture in floating cages did not present zootechnical biases comparing to pond culture. The second objective of this study was to assess the present method as a statistical point of view. We found that for expected differences of 20% to the control mean, 3 and 6 floating cages per treatment will be reasonable to determined statistical differences for growth parameters and survival. Furthermore, we showed a significant pond effect as regard as survival and growth between both sets of cages. This results illustrated the within farm variability among the ponds, and confirmed that specific characteristics of each ponds from a same farm make difficult to use them as experimental unit. The study demonstrates that floating cages rearing is an economical, powerful, and sensitive experimental tool for shrimp culture studies specifically undertaken under close to semi-intensive production conditions.