“…The microbial composition has been studied in the water column and sediment of shrimp ponds (Li, Zhang, Juck, Fortin, Greer & Tang ; Tang, Tao, Tan, Mu, Peng, Yang, Tong & Chen ; Zhang, Sun, Liu, Xuan, Jiang, Pan, Zhang, Gong, Lu, Yu, Kumar, Hu, Cao, Xue & Gong ), freshwater crab ponds (Liu, Zhou, He, Yao & Ringo ), seawater fish ponds (Zeng, Ma, Wei, Jiao, Tang, Wu & Jian ; Pereira, Salvador, Arrojado, Silva, Santos, Cunha, Gomes & Almeida ) and lobster tanks (Bourne, Young, Webster, Payne, Salmon, Demel & Hall ; Payne, Hall, Sly & Bourne ). However, knowledge in bacterial diversity in freshwater polyculture and integrated ponds is scarce (Zhou, Wang, Tang & Dai ; Huang, Liu, Li & Wang ).…”