This paper illustrated a research on mud crab cage culture, which lasted for 60 days, using survival rate, molting rate, carapace-length (CL) growth rate, carapace-width (CW) growth rate and meat increasing coefficient as indicators, to study effects of cage material, cage capacity and cage placement layer on survival, molt and growth of cage cultured mud crab. The results showed as follow: with temperature between 25 and 30℃,salinity 13~20 and pH 7.8~8.3,total survival rate of cage cultivated mud crab was (59.85±9.50)%,molting rate was (40.69±5.90)%,CL growth rate was 107.73%,CW growth rate was 89.39%,meat increasing coefficient was 286.11% and meat fullness degree was＞1 all along. Cage material, cage capacity and cage placement layer influenced the effect of cage culture: the plastic net cage was better than plastic box significantly (P＜0.05). In respect of capacity, group M was the best, better than group L or group S significantly (P＜0.05), and group S was better than group L insignificantly (P＞0.05); concerning cage placement layer, the middle layer was the best, better than the bottom layer or the surface layer highly significantly (P＜0.01), and the bottom layer was better than surface layer insignificantly (P＞0.05). This study revealed the feasibility of mud crab cage culture in earthen shrimp ponds.
