lauttimur.com - Milkfish, also called bandeng, or bangos, (Chanos chanos), silvery marine food fish that lives in Indian and Pacific Ocean. The milkfish is often collected when young and raised for food in brackish or freshwater tropical ponds. It is a toothless herbivore with the length of 1 to 1.5 m.

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Here are 8 fun facts about Milkfish:

•    In Taiwan, there is a milkfish festival each year and a museum dedicated to the fish on the island
•    Indigenous Hawaiians like to use this fish, which they refer to as Awa, in traditional recipes
•    Aquaculture practices in Indonesia, Taiwan, and the Philippines raise more than 1.1 million tons of milkfish every year
•    Female milkfish can lay up to 5 million eggs at a time during the spawning season
•    California tried, but failed, to introduce the milkfish into local ponds and freshwater lakes in 1877
•    Milkfish, whose other names include Bandeng and Bangos, are the last remaining living species of the Chanidae family
•    Its distinctive characteristic is its wide and deeply forked tail, allows the fish to be fast swimmers
•    Milkfish swim in large schools. When hurt, their body produces an alarm substance which alerts their companions to predators or other danger

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Milkfish will mature when they reach the age of five years, but they only spawn in fully saline waters. Their spawning ground usually occurs near coral reefs during the warms months of the year on the new or full moon, taking place mostly at night. Mature females around eight years old and weigh about 6 kg can produce between 3 to 5 million eggs per spawn.

The milkfish eggs and larvae will stay in the planktonic stage for two to three weeks, before they settle. Once they become juvenile, milkfish will swim into brackish waters. Like the adults, juvenile milkfish feed on wide variety of planktonic item from detritus, zooplankton and algae.

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