How do I increase dissolved oxygen in a shrimp pond?
Low DO is the number one killer in shrimp aquaculture. A pond can go from healthy at 6 mg/L at 6 PM to lethal below 2 mg/L by 4 AM if aeration and biomass are mismatched. Here is how to raise DO fast — and how to stop the crash from happening again.
Turn on every aerator, cut feed by 50% for 24 hours, and add emergency oxygen tablets (sodium percarbonate) if DO is below 2 mg/L. Long-term: 1 HP of paddlewheel per 500 kg standing biomass, run sunset to sunrise.
Step-by-step
- 1
Measure at 4 AM, not 8 AM
DO reaches its daily minimum 1–2 hours before sunrise. If your morning reading is 3 mg/L at 7 AM, the actual overnight minimum was probably 1.5 mg/L — already lethal.
- 2
Run every aerator now
Paddlewheels, aspirators, and diffused air all count. Target 4–6 mg/L before sunset so the pond has a buffer to burn through the night.
- 3
Cut feed by 30–50% for 24 hours
Uneaten feed decays and consumes oxygen. Reducing ration drops the biological oxygen demand within one tide cycle.
- 4
Emergency oxygen: 1–2 kg sodium percarbonate per 1000 m²
Broadcast across the surface. Provides 6–12 hours of O₂ release. Not a fix — a stopgap while you diagnose the root cause.
- 5
Match aeration to biomass
Rule of thumb: 1 HP paddlewheel per 400–600 kg of shrimp biomass. Recalculate every 15 days as shrimp grow.
- 6
Manage the bloom
A Secchi reading below 25 cm means the algal bloom is too dense — night respiration will crash DO. Partial water exchange (10–20%) or dose zeolite to thin it.
When to call a technician
- DO stays below 3 mg/L for more than 2 hours despite full aeration.
- Shrimp are climbing pond edges or gathering at aerator discharge — active gasping.
- Sudden dark-brown or milky-white pond colour change (algal die-off or vibrio bloom).
- Repeat overnight crashes for 3+ consecutive nights.
How CAMARON handles this automatically
CAMARON's IoT DO probe streams a reading every 5 minutes. The predictive alert fires when the 6-hour trend projects DO will cross 3 mg/L before sunrise — usually 3–4 hours before a crash — so you can add aerators or dose oxygen before shrimp die, not after.
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