Baby fish are especially vulnerable when they are growing from fries to fingerlings, nursery ponds provide a safe place for these infants to grow. Fry often haven't developed the scales or fins they'll need to defend themselves and fight for resources with larger, more aggressive competition. Their mouths are also often too small to eat the food that's being fed to their older neighbors. At this stage, fry primarily feed on algae and plankton.
Isolating vulnerable young fish means that farmers are able to pay close attention to their conditions and health until they grow to be more hardy. This close attention means that fish are growing in the ideal conditions, meaning there's more of them, and they often grow faster. This provides a steady and large influx of healthy, happy juvenile fish for aquaculture farmerrs.
