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There can be more to fish farming than you know!

Fish farming can be described as a money spinning business but only few people tapped into this hidden treasure. The reason may be due to lack of information or that people are not ready to learn and acquire the skills needed to run the business. We have left the fish farming business in the hands of big time investors for so long.

Despite their huge investment in the business, there is still gap between demand and supply in the market place. The truth is that, fish farming can be done at any scale. If you have small space in your compound or house, you can actually operate fish farming as a home business.

The story of fish consumption in our country is an interesting one. Before now, fish was regarded as no man’s food. The focus was on meat especially cow meat. Gradually, fish consumption has graduated from poor man’s food into one of the household delicacies. Today, there is always a market for fishes of different types. Fish farming is actually a goldmine for somebody living in Nigeria as an example. Information had it that Nigeria remains the biggest importer of fish in Africa. What this means is that, fish farming is a golden opportunity for anyone who may like to invest into the business in Nigeria. Of course, this opportunity is not limited to Nigeria. If you carry out market research in your country or locality, you may find out that the same opportunity may have been there untapped. When I talk about fish farming, the main focus here is cat fish farming. Catfish can be raised in earthen pond, plastic pond in wooden vats.

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If you desire to start a fish farming business, the first thing you need to do is to go for training. Attending courses or reading books on fish farming may not be sufficient. If you actually want to success in fish farming business, you actually need practical experience. The best way to acquire the practical experience is to work either as an apprentice with an established fish farmer. Alternatively, after attending training on fish farming, you can apply for a job in a farm where they raise and grow fish. Fish farmers employ people who are skilled in plumbing works, construction of vats, feeding and nursing of fish. If you work in such environment, you can easily have access to cheap on the job training. At the same time, you can make connections with people who can help you in your fish farming any time you are set so start your own. You will be exposed to the marketing techniques involved in selling fishes. Most importantly, you will have access to reliable sources of broods, fingerlings and other materials you will need for your fish farming business.

As mentioned, fish farming is very lucrative and could be very risky at the same time. The risks involved in the business can be mitigated by the acquisition of necessary knowledge and skills required to grow fish. You need intensive practical training in catfish management. This will cover brood stock care, maintenance and induction; adoption of different hatchery techniques, nursing of hatchlings to fries and fingerlings etc.

Having acquired the necessary skills, catfish business is easy to set up. As a starter, catfish business is a business you can start with little capital. Even if you have the capital to start big, it is always advisable to start the business small. Starting the business small will help you to learn more about the business. If you make any mistake, you can easily learn and move forward. The impact of such mistake will not be too much for you to bear. You can start catfish farming by focusing on the production of fingerlings.

If you are starting with fingerlings production, this will involve getting male and female brood stock.  You need to be careful in your brood stock selection. The essence of getting a male and female brood stock is for you to ensure that the eggs from the female fish are fertilised by the sperm from the male fish. If the process is done properly, the eggs will be hatched within one or two days. Hatching percentage ranges between fifty and ninety five per cent. Within 3 days, you will begin to notice that the larvas are changing into fries. At this stage, there is need for adequate care and nursing. If you are using a wooden vat, a wooden vat of 3 x 12 ft with a little plumbing work can contain 3,000 – 3,500 fingerlings. At the end of twelve weeks, the fingerlings are ready for sale. You sell fingerlings to other catfish farmers who will raise them into grow outs. But before you go into the production of fingerlings, you should be sure that there are catfish farmers who are willing to buy from you. Raising of fingerlings does not require much space. You can even do it in your bath room. Another good thing about this business idea is the short payback period.

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The second option for catfish farming is grow-out. Grow out involves stocking of ponds with fingerlings and raising them to table size fishes. Fingerlings will grow to table size between 3 and 6 months. The growth rate of the catfish is determined by the quality of the fingerlings you bought, care and maintenance of the fishes. Grow out fishes can be sold alive, smoked, frozen or dried. The prices for catfish vary from location to location. It also depends on who you are selling to. You can sell to individuals, retail marketers, restaurants and hotels. Fishes will be ready for harvesting in different periods; this makes it impossible for one person to dominate the market.

Addressing Catfish Mortality

Mortality of your catfish, whether fingerlings or juveniles is one of the battles a lot of farmers will have to battle with. Mortality simply means the death of your catfish. It is not a good experience at all because apart from the reduction it causes to your catfishes; it is also a loss of time, money, efforts and other resources. While it is practically impossible to avoid catfish mortality entirely, every catfish farmer should try as much as possible to keep it to the barest minimum. Conducting an obituary for your catfish every day can be demoralizing and frustrating. That is why in this articles, I will give you a tip on how you can curb high rate of catfish mortality rate.

Good Water: Not every water is good for the growing of catfish. You need to be sure that the PH of your water is at a reasonable level. In fact, I will say that this is the starting point. Before you invest into construction of ponds, you will to be sure that the water that will be in the pond will be habitable for the catfish. Catfish cannot survive in the water with high PH. It is not good for them. In fact, it does not matter the quality and the quantity of catfish you stock in a pond, if the water is not habitable or suitable for the fishes, you can lose everything. However, if the mistake has already been made, that does not mean you cannot do anything about it especially if you operate in a small scale. What you can do is to ensure that the water is treated first in a separate water tank before releasing the water into the ponds where your catfishes are stored. Alkalizing the water by use of shell and other things will help you in this regards. I will advise you to contact an expert for this. The money you will pay an expert will not be comparable to what you will lose if all your juveniles or fingerlings should die. Also, once you have been taught what to do, it becomes an asset to you. That means that the cost will not be recurring. You can easily recover the money you paid the consultant from other sets of stocks if not completely from the set you are rearing.

Pond Preparation: You cannot just pour your catfish into pond just like that whether you are using vats, earthen ponds or concrete ponds. You need to treat them in preparation for you fingerlings or juveniles. You should allow the water to stay for two or three days before you introduce your fingerlings or juveniles into the ponds.

Regular change of water: Don’t allow water in your fish tank to overstay before you change it. Some people will ask that how often you should be changing water. It actually depends on some variables such as stocking density, how often you feed your catfishes, age or size of your catfish, type of feeds used, system of your pond etc. If your catfishes are densely populated, it will affect how freely they can breathe. They will always require frequent change of water more than when the ponds are scarcely populated. Also, the more often you feed your catfishes, the more waste they produce. In fact, you can easily notice this from their water. However, even if your water is not that dirty, it is not healthy to keep fish in the same water for a long number of days. If you are using flow through system, you may not have much problem about changing water. In fact, this is the best system. But the question is that, how many catfish farmers have access to good power and water supply than can guaranty continuous flow of water in and out of their ponds? So how often should you be changing water? As I said earlier, it depends on your situation. For some, it may be every day. For others, it may be every two, three or even four days interval. With time, you will know the interval that is right from you. But if you are experiencing high mortality rate, it can be a signal that you need to be changing your pond water more often.

Buy Juveniles: In most cases, the mortality of fingerlings is higher than that of juveniles. Fingerlings are just around 4 weeks old while juveniles are already between 8 and 10 weeks. Juveniles have already passed that such tender age when they can be exposed to environmental threats such as threat of being killed by the shooters. I am not saying that juveniles are totally exempted but the risk is lower. But some people prefer fingerlings because of pricing. While you can get fingerlings between N9 and N12 each, juveniles can sell as high as N30 each. If you are an experienced catfish farmer, fingerlings can be a good choice for you. But for starters, it is safer to go for juveniles. Nevertheless, you should ensure that you are buying good breeds. If you plan to buy juvenile catfish, it will be good if you can monitor the fishes from the fingerlings stage so that they won’t sell runts to you as juveniles. If you mistakenly buy runts catfish, you will soon discover that they don’t grow very well no matter the amount and quality of feeds you give them.

Sorting: Whether you buy fingerlings or juveniles, you need to prepare to sort your catfish on a regular basis. In catfish farming, you will always see some shooters. A novice will be happy that there are shooters among his catfishes. It is actually good but in the other hand, it can be your undoing. Shooters can reduce the number of your fishes drastically. In fact, some shooters don’t eat the feeds you give them. They eat on smaller fishes. So, if you stock 1,000 fingerlings, you can discover that almost 100 fingerlings are missing. This is difficult to notice as you may not see the scarp of their heads anywhere. Shoots can swallow the entire fish. So, there won’t be any trace that your fishes are missing. Therefore, you need to sort your catfishes based on their sizes. Catfish of the same size should be kept in the same ponds or vats.

Timely Feeding: Catfish are not the same. There are different types of catfishes. The type and the age of catfish you grow, type of the feeds you give them will determine how often you should feed them. If you starve your catfish, they will start eating themselves. Once they are used to eating themselves, the trend may continue for a while until you sort them out.

Medication: This may be the last resort. If you have tried all other means and the mortality still continues, you may need to contact an expert. He may need to take the sample of your fish, water and feed so that he will know the right medication you need to apply.

Why Fish Farming?

1. The market for fish keeps growing as a result of more awareness that fishes are known to contain higher percentage of protein than meat.
2. It is also safer to consume fish since it is less likely to contain infestation that is common with meat such as beef or pork.
3. Apart from its richness in vitamins, fish also contains some qualities of calcium, phosphorous, fats and other nutrients needed for human growth and health.
4. Fish is free from cultural and religious taboos which makes it to be a universal favorites, breaking all barriers such as religion, creed, cultural, ethnicity, age grouping and color.
5. It is a good side business idea that one can combine with other home based business.

Analysis of Fish Farming Business

The SWOT Analysis below shows the possible strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats anyone going into fish farming business may face. While it is not possible for all situations to apply at the same time, going through the points mentioned will help you identify the situation that is peculiar to you.

Strengths Practical skills Good water Physically fit Working capital Home operated business Premium price Good infrastructure	Weaknesses High cost of feeding Lack of infrastructure Production output not predictable Low technical skill Poor marketing It requires attention
Opportunities Local demand High demand Low wages Ban of imported frozen fishes Tax incentives Low competition	Threats Cheap import from overseas Predators Diseases Irregular supplies of feeds Flooding Drought Theft

Strengths

Above every other thing, if you want to start a fish farming business, you need a practical experience. As already mentioned above, the best way to acquire the skills for fish farming is to work as an apprentice in a fish farm. Having practical experience can reduce the risks involved in running a fish farming business considerably.

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Water is the habitation for fishes. Each species of fishes requires specific environment to survive. Therefore, you cannot say you want to start fish farming just because you have access to water. The quality of the water has to be tested to be sure that the level of alkaline present in the water is suitable for the fishes you want to grow. This is one of the technical aspects of the business.

Anybody that will start fish farming business is supposed to be physically fit. Starting from sorting of ‘grow-outs’ to harvesting of mature fishes; the business requires a certain level of energy. It also depends on the scale of your fishing farming business. If you operate natural ponds, you should be able to swim.

I have seen a lot of people rushing into fish farming business without having adequate working capital. After the initial investment, you need funds to buy feeds. When your fishes are still at fries or fingerling stage, they may not consume much. But as they continue to grow, their daily intakes of feeds also increases. I had this practical experience from my wife when she was operating her mini fish farming business from our backyard. We had six tanks with the capacity of two hundred fishes per tank. I accompanied her to where she bought the fingerling. Left for me, I would have bought one thousand fingerling for the five tanks while the sixth tank served as water tank where the water would get treated before releasing it to the fishes. Based on her experience, she bought just eight hundred fingerling. She said that the fifth tank would be used for sorting. Besides, we need enough money to keep as working capital so that we could feed the fishes well. Just as she said, by the time the fishes entered their second month, we had already ran out of cash. We needed to source for funds elsewhere for us to feed the fishes until they grew to table size. Therefore, it is expected that you have enough working capital that will take you through the growing stage of the fishes. If you buy the right species and feed them well, you should be able to harvest the first set after three months.

It is more advantageous to have your fish pond around or very close to your house. With this, you can run it as a home based business. Fishes requires attention in the morning, afternoon and evening for seven days of the week. Therefore, having your fish farm close to you is a plus. It will even prevent predators and thieves from invading your fish farm.

You need basic infrastructure such as electricity for the pumping of water and aeration of the ponds. Except you operate earthen ponds, you need to change the water in the vat constantly. If you stock the vats with fishes to their maximum capacity, the water should be well aerated.

If you have a target market where you can sell your fishes at premium prices, this is a good strength. Such market may include selling to hotels and restaurants.

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Weaknesses

If you go through the weaknesses stated in the SWOT analysis template above, it is advisable you address them before starting a fish farm. One of the pronounced weaknesses in fish farming business is the unpredictability of the production output. This implies that you need to create best and worst scenarios when drawing up your revenue forecast. If your projections signal that you may not be able to recover your costs, you may need to find a way of reducing your costs without imparting on the quality of your fishes. If this is not possible, then starting a fish farming may not be feasible for you. For instance, the cost of fish feeds is very high. If you want to depend on foreign feeds, you may not be able to break even not to talk about making profits. However, if you can produce your own local feeds, this will cut down your costs considerably. You just need to get the formula right. Also, you should ensure that you don’t feed your fish excessively. The misconception people have about feeding fish is that, they think if you give them much feeds, the fish will grow very fast. This is not true. You only need to give them what they need per time. It is even better to give them little feeds more frequently than to over-feed them at once. The fish may seem like picking the feeds on the surface. The truth is that a lot of the feeds settle down at the bottom of the pond except you are using floating feeds. Left over feeds could be poisonous to fish. This makes you to lose at both sides. You will be wasting your feeds thereby increasing your costs and at the same time increasing the fish mortality rate thereby reducing your output.

Fish also requires attention. You need to be around so as to prevent predators. Also, you need to be very sensitive to the behavior of the fishes. The fact that they ate very well in the previous night does not mean they are going to eat at the same rate the following day. Strange behavior on their part may signal sickness or disease. Once one fish is infected, it can easily spread to other ones. But if you are sensitive enough, you can quickly curb the spreading.

Opportunities

There are certain factors that can help fish farming business to thrive. Few of them will be discussed here:

If there is large and growing local demand for fishes in your area, this means that you can be sure of the marketability of the fishes immediately they reach table size. Keeping fishes beyond reasonable period may make the business to turn unprofitable due to the cost of feeds.

Recent ban on importation of frozen fishes is a good omen that the market for locally raised fishes will grow. Also, tax incentives to local farmers will increase the profitability of the fish farming business. The money fish farmers would have used to pay tax can be used to grow their businesses. The competition in fisheries is still low in the country. One can quickly take advantage of this coupled with the tax incentives to farmers (if it exists in your country) to establish oneself.

Threats

Fish farming business is not without threats. Natural disasters such as drought and flood can adversely affect those that operate earthen ponds. You should be prepared to develop a strategy to counter this. In case of flood, you can protect your ponds with netted fence so as to prevent erosion from carrying your fishes away. In case of drought, digging a borehole for your fish farm will ensure you constantly have water supplied to your ponds.

The enemies of fishes such as predators and even thieves can be prevented through close monitoring and by paying adequate attentions to the ponds.

If you suffer irregular supplies of feeds, it is advisable that you buy in bulk in other to avoid stock out. Sourcing for locally made feeds can equally be a good alternative.

Regular preventive treatments of the fishes will prevent sickness and diseases among the fishes. If you spot any sick fish, it should be quickly isolated before the disease is spread to other fishes.

Agriculture, Foods and Healthcare

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