Knowledge on the culture performance of fish in various aquaculture systems is useful to assess the suitability of species for aquaculture and to help identify appropriate aquaculture methods and culture systems for these species.

The main purpose of the CULTSYS table is to summarize data on aquaculture experiments. The table contains information on the experimental systems and includes physico-chemical parameters, quality and quantity of nutrient inputs and production by species (see also the ‘CULTSPEC table’ below), thus providing a model for a form which scientists might follow when reporting aquaculture experiments.

The Country where the culture was conducted is given.

The Name of the farm, station or institute refers to the location where the experiment was conducted; details on Latitude, Longitude and Altitude may also be entered.

Year: Pertains to the date when the experiment was conducted.

Type of culture: Refers to mono- or a polyculture, i.e., whether one or several species are cultured in the same pond.

Sex: Refers to classification of fish used in aquaculture. Choices include: monosex male; monosex female; mixed sex.

Culture system I gives a broad classification of the culture system with the choices: intensive (high density, food added); semi-intensive (medium density, no food but fertilizer added); extensive (low density, nothing added); experimental.

Culture system II gives a more detailed description of the culture system with the choices: ponds; integrated farm pond system; sewage- (excreta and wastewater) fed system; rice field; raceways; static tanks; silos; cages; pens; farm dams; other (see Description of culture system).

The number of Production units is given including the Area (ha), Average depth (m) and the Volume of the experimental units (m³).

Main water source: Describes the main water supply. The choices are: rainfall; spring; river/creek; lake; reservoir; estuary; lagoon; ocean; groundwater; tap water; cooling water; sewage; other (see Description of culture system). The Supplemental water source offers the same choices as in the main water source.

The physico-chemical parameters present values for Temperature, Salinity, pH, Oxygen (mg× l^-1), Oxygen saturation (%) and Alkalinity (mg× l^-1 CaCO₃). Ranges are entered in separate lower and upper limit fields and in most cases, the mean or midrange of the available values is calculated.

Description of culture system: Accommodates more detailed description of the whole culture system and water source(s).

Main food: Refers to major source of nutrition. Choices are: in-situ production; in-situ production plus added feed; only added feed.

Feed quantity: Refers to the total amount of feeds added in kilograms in either wet weight or dry weight.

% BWD: Pertains to the dry weight of feed provided in % of the wet weight of fish fed per day.

Feed quality: Refers to the percentage protein content in dry weight.

Nitrogen and Phosphate fertilizer inputs are given either by kg× ha^-1 or kg× ha^-1× day^-1.

Description of nutrient input presents a detailed description of the main food, including diet composition, food conversion, etc., in a text field.

Comments: For miscellaneous comments not addressed by fields available.

Production: unit cycles (kg/m², kg/m³, kg/m³/d and kg/m²/yr); production period in days as well as production cycles are also given.

Although the number of farmed finfish (under 200) is relatively small, there is a huge amount of aquaculture data available in journals, reports, etc. Progress in entering such data has been hampered by the lack of standardization in aquaculture experiments. These constraints are being addressed by increased efforts to document and to standardize data and by providing species profiles (see below).

The USAID-funded Pond Dynamics/Aquaculture Collaborative Research Support Program (PD/A CRSP) has made considerable progress towards the standardization of pond experiments (Szyper 1992). Agustin et al. (1993) have provided some formats for documentation of genetic resources for aquaculture.

To date, the CULTSYS table contains over 300 records of aquaculture experiments for about 15 species and strains, obtained mainly from the following references: Hopkins and Cruz (1982), Costa-Pierce and Soemarwoto (1990) and Christensen (1994). Most of the data have not yet been checked. However, the data of Costa-Pierce and Soemarwoto (1990) have been entered under the supervision of Barry Costa-Pierce and the fields have been reviewed by him. Similarly, the data of Hopkins and Cruz (1982) have been further verified and analyzed by Mark Prein (Prein 1990; Prein et al. 1993) and entered under his supervision. Other aquaculture datasets such as those of van Dam (1990) and the USAID-funded PD/A CRSP will be included in the future.

Clicking on the Biology button in the SPECIES window, the Fish as food button in the BIOLOGY window, then the Aquaculture button in the following window will open the CULTURE SYSTEM form.

The CULTSYS and CULSPEC tables were not yet available on the Internet in December 2000.

We thank Liza Agustin for her contributions to this table and to a previous version of this chapter, while a member of the FishBase Team.

Agustin, L.Q., R. Froese, A.E. Eknath and R.S.V. Pullin. 1993. Documentation of genetic resources for aquaculture - the role of FishBase, p. 63-68. In D. Penman, N. Roongratri and B. McAndrew (eds.) International Workshop on Genetics in Aquaculture and Fisheries Management. ASEAN-EEC Aquaculture Development and Coordination Programme, Bangkok, Thailand.

Costa-Pierce, B.A. and O. Soemarwoto, Editors. 1990. Reservoir fisheries and aquaculture development for resettlement in Indonesia. ICLARM Tech. Rep. 23, 378 p.

Christensen, M.S. 1994. Growth of tinfoil barb, Puntius schwanenfeldii, fed various feeds, including fresh chicken manure, in floating cages. Asian Fish. Sci. 7:29-34.

Hopkins, K.D. and E.M. Cruz. 1982. The ICLARM-CLSU integrated animal-fish farming project: final report. ICLARM Tech. Rep. 5, 96 p.

Prein, M. 1990. Multivariate analysis of tilapia growth experiments in ponds: case studies from the Philippines, Israel, Zambia and Peru. Kiel University, Kiel, Germany. PhD thesis. 125 p.

Prein, M., G. Hulata and D. Pauly, Editors. 1993. Multivariate methods in aquaculture research: case studies of tilapias in experimental and commercial systems. ICLARM Stud. Rev. 20, 221 p.

Szyper, J.P. 1992. A standard format for design and evaluation of pond experiments. Naga, ICLARM Q. 15(4):18-20.

van Dam, A.A. 1990. Multiple regression analysis of accumulated data from aquaculture experiments: a rice-fish culture example. Aquacult. Fish. Manage. 21:1-15.