Evaluating a low‐cost salt mixture in brackish water intensive shrimp (litopenaeus vannamei) production systems

Inland production of marine shrimp provides high‐quality shrimp to consumers. Artificial sea salts are added to local water to provide the essential minerals required by shrimp; however, commercial salts are expensive. An experiment evaluated different combinations of a homemade, least‐cost salt mixture (LCS) and a common commercial sea salt (CSS). The LCS formulation was made using six salts: NaCl, MgSO4, MgCl2, CaCl2, KCl, and NaHCO3. The five treatments in this study were as follows: 100% LCS, 75/25% LCS/CSS, 50/50% LCS/CSS, 25/75% LCS/CSS, and 100% CSS; each treatment was randomly assigned to four 1 m3 tanks. There were some significant differences between treatments in DO, pH, and nitrite concentration, but these differences were subtle. There were no significant differences in mean weight, growth rate, FCR, biomass, or survival of shrimp. The 100% LCS salt formulation was 65% less expensive than the CSS mixture by weight, and the cost per kg of shrimp produced was 57% lower using the LCS. In fact, even the 50/50% treatment had a significantly (p ≤ 0.05) lower cost kg‐1 shrimp than the 100% CSS treatment. These results indicate that this LCS formulation is suitable for intensive shrimp production, and the cost savings may be substantial.