Jinfeng Pan^1,2

1 Shaoxing Shangyu Xinda Ecological Agriculture Development Co., Ltd, Shaoxing 312365, Zhejiang, China
2 Zhejiang Agronomist College, Hangzhou 310021, Zhejiang, China
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Aquaculture, 2026, Vol. 16, No. 4   
Received: 08 Jun., 2026    Accepted: 28 Jun., 2026    Published: 20 Jul., 2026

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Freshwater pond aquaculture is an important component of China' s aquaculture system. However, long-term high-density feeding and intensive management can easily lead to the accumulation of residual feed, feces, organic detritus, and nutrients in the water column and sediment, resulting in water quality deterioration, sediment aging, eutrophication, and increased pressure from tailwater discharge. Ecological food chain closure is based on material cycling, energy flow, and trophic complementarity. By rationally configuring producers, consumers, and decomposers, aquaculture wastes can be reintroduced into the internal circulation of pond ecosystems, thereby achieving resource reuse and pollution reduction. This study explores the application mechanisms and practical pathways of ecological food chain closure in freshwater pond aquaculture, elaborates its roles in nutrient recycling, water self-purification regulation, and multi-trophic synergistic enhancement, and summarizes typical models including fish-shrimp-shellfish-algae coordinated aquaculture, fish-aquatic plant-microorganism ecological regulation, and pond-ecological ditch-constructed wetland recycling purification. The study suggests that ecological food chain closure can improve pond resource utilization efficiency, enhance water self-purification capacity, reduce pressure from tailwater treatment, and promote the transformation of aquaculture systems from high-input and high-discharge models toward ecological, circular, and efficient development. However, its promotion still faces challenges such as unreasonable biological configuration, fluctuations in environmental conditions, insufficient technical management capacity, and incomplete economic evaluation systems. In the future, green and sustainable development of freshwater pond aquaculture should be promoted through site-specific model selection, optimization of aquaculture species and trophic-level configuration, improvement of water quality monitoring and tailwater recycling systems, and strengthening of standardized and digital management.

Ecological food chain closure; Freshwater pond aquaculture; Nutrient cycling; Water self-purification; Green aquaculture