Bighead carp Hypophthalmichthys nobilis
تعريف
Bighead carp is a Chinese cyprinid now distributed almost globally through aquaculture, with FAO FishStat recording 3,545,074 tonnes farmed in 2024. Like silver carp it is a filter-feeding column species, but its gill filter is coarser, so it takes zooplankton and larger phytoplankton rather than fine algae; the two are stocked together precisely because they partition the plankton, with grass carp working the macrophytes and common carp the pond bottom. It favours shallow, warm backwaters and flooded areas above about 24 degrees C, and FishBase records a very wide environmental tolerance of 1 to 38 degrees C, a maximum of 146 cm standard length, 40 kg and 20 years. Pond growth is fast, one and a half to two kilograms in the first year. Age at first maturity is genuinely disputed between sources and is far later in temperate Europe than in the tropics, which matters when planning broodstock. Like the other Chinese carps it spawns only in rivers, so hatchery propagation is essential. Being an ectotherm, its metabolic rate, feed intake and drug clearance all track water temperature, and withdrawal periods must be read against it.
المؤشّرات الحيوية
- الوزن عند البلوغ
- ≤ 40
- العمر المتوقّع
- ≤ 20
- أقصى طول
- 146
- حرارة الماء المثلى
- 23 – 26 C
- العمر عند أول تكاثر
- 2 – 3 years
maximum published weight; FAO gives pond growth of 1.5-2 kg in the first year and 7-10 kg at three to four years
maximum reported age
maximum length, standard length, male/unsexed
PROPAGATION (induced-spawning) window, NOT a grow-out optimum. FAO states it for the Chinese major carps collectively, a group the same document defines as grass carp, silver carp and bighead; it is the only optimum any consulted FAO source states for this species. No grow-out optimum exists in FAO's cultured species fact sheet for bighead carp, which gives only a tolerance of 0.5-38 C. The withdrawn 1-38 C was FishBase's climate-zone line and must not be used as an optimum.
CLIMATE-QUALIFIED: this is the tropical/subtropical figure, which is the one that applies in MENA. The same source gives 7-8 years for the species outside the tropics - 'It reaches sexual maturity at 7-8 years' - and these two are deliberately NOT merged into one 2-8 year span, because no population sits across it and a hatchery cannot plan broodstock from it. Note also that the '7-8 years in Europe' wording of the withdrawn record was an inference: the Europe clause in this passage belongs to the preceding sentence about grass carp and silver carp, not to bighead. The source adds that maturity also depends on food and water temperature, and that carps mature earlier in warm water. FishBase's tm = 3-5 years is a third, separate estimate and is not merged in either.
تُعرض المؤشّرات المُوثَّقة فقط. غياب مؤشّر هنا يعني أنه غير مذكور في مرجع موثوق لهذا النوع — لا أنه ناقص من الصفحة.
السلالات — لا يوجد ارتباط
لا سلالة منشورة لهذا النوع بعد. السلالات محصودة بأعداد كبيرة وتنتظر اعتماداً بشرياً قبل أن تُنشر.
كل السلالات ←العلامات السريرية — لا يوجد ارتباط
لا علامة سريرية منشورة بعد — وهي أيضاً ما ينقص باحث العلامات.
تصفّح المجموعة ←