Hi Farmer,

How is your shopping for the sprayer? Do you mind to share infromation about the sprayer that can reach to 40-50 fleets?

HI Teratai,
No luck

Mist Blower (backpack), it's about 15 to 25 ft high (with a micronex head attached, reduce the droplets to micron size)

Seen some photos of people using back pack power sprayer with long lance. I think for pest control, wastage is quite high. For foilar spray, fertilizer, I guess it's ok. Another thing, the long lance looks heavy, difficult to handle in the field.

Still scratching head.

Rain stopped. Off to farm.

If 200acres is entirely water size with depth 10ft and above, it's a huge lake.
Question to consider, how well you know the lake, what's in it? It can make a difference.
How about the security etc?

Having access to large funding, wonders can be done.
Despite that, you would want to avoid as much mistakes and time wastage.

There are numerous downstream activities that can be done with Tilapia.
But I believe, one step at a time is better approach as you can stabilize yourself with experience learnt before moving downstreams.onl
Yet again, with $$, you can short cut and hire the expert know how people to do the work.
I myself prefer to hands on everything, will only leave it to managers once the ship had been steadied.

I myself is in the Aqua Feed business, where my department mainly handling Tilapia Feed business.
I'm also in the Tilapia farming, small farm with 2 ponds. I also secure my clients would be able to sell their fish when harvest.

My feed cost in my farm is about RM3.50 - RM4.50 per kg of fish depending of what I am doing with it. Market ex-farm price vary from RM8-RM10 per kg. Fluctuations depends on demand and supply.
Feed cost would be your largest operating cost. How efficiently you balance cost vs benefit is the key. How efficiently you convert your FCR. We usually aim to have lower FCR to be more profitable. Yet, on another hand, lower FCR with better margin may not neccessary means more profits.
As for other operating cost, it entirely depend on yourself.

Lastly, most important is the market and your location.
Certain location does not command a good price.

Oh yes, prices fluctuations play a major part. Papaya in my area dropped by 50% recently. No eye see. Waiting for my flight to Krabi for some time off. Deal with it when I'm back.

Hi M

Thanks very much for your input.

I know the lake very well.
We are indeed thinking of employing some experts.
I understand there is a large tilapia setup in Perak. That's what we are thinking of.

Our market would be predominantly overseas where we probably fetch better prices.

Whats your yield from your two ponds?

Yes. Feed costs is the highest portion of operating costs.
Therefore we are thinking of the holistic approach from fries, cultivation to packaging, feedmeal manufacturing, etc.
Thinking of using the cage systems.

are the operating risks associated with such venture?
One of concern is the waste as in the fish poo. Is the contamination by such waste a big concern for a large
lake with continuous inflow of water from streams?What

You could employ experts if you have $$ muscle, but a real expert cost a bomb. Domestic experts is rare commodity.

China is world largest Tilapia exporter with ex-farm price at RMB8 = RM4! true that their quality is doubtful but their price is extreme low.
Shall you like to fetch good export EU Price or Middle east price, you need to spend a lot to get certification from them. Having said that, the price you fetch only slightly higher than domestic. Therefore supply domestic is far better if you have ways.

As far as I know in Perak, their ex-farm price atm is slightly lower than those in Selangor.

Fries - although there isn't that high number of hatchery. I do believe atm certain fries are at oversupply which push down the prices, except for some species, but those are the imported ones where we call completely neutered.
Packing - Margin is low unless you found targeted market.
Feedmill - Getting the right nutritionist is tough enough. Jalan to get quality and rare raw materials is very tough (mainly secretive), plus countless of additives out there in the market. So to use which and at what composition to efficiently to better the FCR of the feed is a true challenge. It look like rocket science to me in the beginning. Till now, my business partner take care of it while I work on marketing.

There are numerous calculated and uncalculated risks. I do advise start small, however the same successful way of managing 1 pond is not the same with doing it on 10 ponds with same practice.

Fish poo may seems the big problem to some, but it's rather easy to overcome. You just can never overcome nature.
In huge lake, I believe the ecosystem itself may be helpful to you.

I had considerable success with approximately 3-4 fish/m cube of water with conservative approach. I'm testing at much higher number, even if that so, that will only be estimation. Some may say I'm too conservative. But in practice, you just can't be greedy in aquaculture. Try it out, then you'll find out by yourself.

In fish, our plural is much. It's not like in cows or pigs, where you can really talk about "daily gain". Nature can help or destroy you.

Despite saying that, our country is consider cheap enough utilizing land and nature water, rather than going for RAS system etc. Look, it's Tilapia, not grouper. Don't have to make things complicated.

Thanks mate! That is very helpful!

All the best in your venture.

Hi M-Century, any chances of you going to your pond on 26 ~ 29th April, would lie to follow & look see, if it's permitted I still harbor an interest of aquaculture
(very small scale, integrated farming ) just that I'm still working on my phase 1, agriculture.

You are very welcome to visit during that time.
I left you pm on my contact number.

hi guys,

sorry to intrude. Im new here,i have been planting chilli plants for about 6 weeks now(started farming on a personal scale since early 2013).

My plants are suffering from spider mites.

I read ladybugs do help control the infestation. Do anyone know where I could purchase them?(tried mudah,cant find)

Im reluctant to go for pesticides. But if there is no other options,I might have to

If anyone has other suggestions to get rid of them, would be most appreciated.

Hey, if you can't get those ladybugs; why not try spraying neem extract on those infected chilli plants.

Just my humble opinion, maybe there is a much better way.

Happy Voting tomorrow.

Going voting 1st thing tomorrow morning.

Found this topic while browsing...people should get into detail on aquaponics practices. Actually there are very few in our country who have the required technical skills of practicing aquaponics. It's not just about operating the mechanical parts of the recirculating system or the chemical balance for plants fertilizer. It's also involved with the biological nature of the bacteria involved and understanding the basic actual needs of plants. Many said that some plants can't grow when being waterlogged but the actual term is the roots easily die without high oxygen in water content.

Aquaponics is great...the closest achievement of a professional aquaponics practinioner is planting a papaya tree in the system, the fruit was so heavy about 30 kg that the trunk broke from the load. Commercially it could be expensive to setup the system but once you have achieved the balance, plants and fishes will go on hyperdrive even more than hydroponics especially in a tropical environment. Putting aside issues of having to give chemical treatment for desease or pest...a healthy plant and fish could easily fight off or survive any illness. What's more there are other alternatives of getting rid of mites, mold or chewing bugs like spraying molasses to make the leaf sweeter in which strangely enough, bug hates to chew sweet leaf.

However I wish to warn people on building a recirculating system in shoplots...if it's just aquaculture but not aquaponics, you better not do it. Water in aquaponic system is so clean, clear and even safe for consumption since e-coli is only presence in mammal. The aquaponics circulation ensures that all ammonia is concerted into other stuff like nitrate. In recirculating system you need to get rid the fish poo and treat the water. A failed aquaculture system will be catastrophic especially in crowded area.

Had a fellow in mentakab industrial zone who made a mistake and decided to just flush the water into the gutter. The awful rotten smell was beyond description.

In addition to that for anyone who's starting a fishfarm in rivers, be careful for any outbreak of parasites. We had that problem in pahang last year where many fingerlings died and there was shortage of tilapia for quite a while. Get help and advice from agencies or experts because fish could easily die from pest, parasites and even low oxygen content in water due to high content of rotting vegetation especially effluence from sewage or floods or overflow from swamps (another reason to choose carefully your location, you might overlooked that hidden sewage pipe).

Maybe somebody had warned about this before but you can never be too careful. Fish are fragile creatures, even stress from handling them in nets or sudden change of temperature could kill a weak fish or fingerlings.

Thank you for your write up arthoz.
Didn't know that aquaponic s can support papaya (larger fruit trees). This looks interesting. It seems that I shall have a long way to go, as I'm still at the early stage of farming, via conventional method.

It could be time for me to look into improving health of the papaya and improving yield when I head back to my farm.

my green chilli are ready for harvesting.

those interested for bulk buy can PM me...thanks

Just an idea from observation and theory if you'd like to test I have some suggestion, haven't got the time and space to do it myself. Papaya roots could get damaged when being waterlogged so try replace about a foot square of the soil with 20mm gravel and sand and also provide proper flow to drain away excess water. It's a practice of balance to prevent too much or too little water but I guess you can experiment...

Aquaponics could support a lot of things. One research facility also trying to discover the viability of using seawater and growing seaweed. Yet the ministry of agriculture do not seem to support this method, aquaponics efforts in our country is supported by the ministry of fishery. You might want to read this page for details:

http://harizamrry.com/2010/01/29/teknologi...ntu-masyarakat/

Confused why they are not pushing this to be practised in the urban area. Right now I'm trying to get a copy of the researcher's dissertation. The document is not yet available to the public without proper authorization.

Great news...just found another cheap method to save water for farming...stopping here to share the link...got a lot of places more to go to spread this idea...

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=454..._count=1&ref=nf

Guess the idea is good, but I think it needs much modification in terms of practicality and also feasibility. Too much PET in the farm (these don't last long under the sun) is not good for the environment. Just my personal opinion.

I'm always have this problem of "cost" for new technology. The value of my products actually leave no budget for high value technology / improvement.

Yeah, some are using unglazed claypot as water reservoir to allow water to slowly seep into the soil but this method is much too expensive for large scale and it's usually practiced in arid region. PET would be bad but it's useful for brackish water like on island or in desert region where most waterholes are contaminated with minerals and salt. Also some fellow researcher had done in sudan during the green famine used a layer of canvas under the topsoil to prevent water from going deeper underground. I tried to use capilary irrigation method but surprisingly the water absorping rate is very fast...clean out a 1.5 liters bottles in an hour or so...anyway good luck with your papaya planting, I'm filling my spare time reading your articles, wonderful ideas you got compiled there.

Btw people should also practice using urine for fertilizer...although there are some segment of our society who sees it as unsanitary but human urine is best source of free fertilizer. I think you could find some youtube or webpage that guide on how to prepare them.

Hi, I got 1/4 arce of wet land, when raining, the after cover the land. What suitable to plant ?