Well done, para, I am way more then impressed. Thanks for putting all the info together. And good job in hosting and keep the topic burning.

As usual I am having funny thoughts in my mind, just yet to turn it into serious business. There are several research I need to carry out:

- soiless farming: cost, pruduction, crop price, material, method, location, manpower.

soiless means no soil, for example the strawberries farms in cameron or a hypotonic farm in a green house. The chili news para posted is one of the example. This should mean less hassle as you do not need to deal with dirt. Kinda suit the city lazy folks like me.

Cost should be higher then traditional farming, as you need to purchase every drop of fertilizer and every piece of potting material. Plenty of stuff to carry around too, like planting your seedlings into the polyplastic. And also the dipping system, etc.

Production should be way higher then traditional farming if you are inside a green house. It is a matter of 14 tons (in open air) to 50 tons(in green house) difference (planting chili, according to a verbal source)

Usually you can learn all thouse method from your fertilizer/seed supplier, perhaps you can even try out some of your creativity as well.

Soiless means you do not need to depend on mother earth, as long as you have air, water and sunlight, you can even do it in a spaceship(certainly not economically viable thou).

Applying smart systems will shoot your budget like a firework, but it certainly wont go out in flames and smoke if you do it right. It is possible to limit the manpower to one self(me). For example, I heard about some german farm which only have 2 employees. The tractor driver, and the boss.

I am looking forward for the agenda, yes I am.

Let all begin to work on something meaningful before our employment life drag us into oblivion.

Happy CNY, gong xi gong xi.

Para, you are rearing fish in tanks! Seem like one of the recent agriworld magazines have mentioned about this. I will bring all my magazines(2004-recent, time changed, but people will still grow the same thing ) if I attend the agenda. Just to have something to look at.

No worries about not understand any ancient characters you have me.

I have kept some vegetation in my condo, so in an attempt to prevent them from turning into fossile while im going off for CNY holiday, I have "did something to them", some sort of automatic watering system capable to supply them several days of water needs. No high tech terminator stuff here, the concept is there, not too sure if they actually works

So will try update you guys once I get back to the traffic jamming KL after next tuesday.

I am giving my pitaya plants some drought test, so they arnt getting any water for one whole dry week kekeke. Those who would like to do pitaya might find this info useful.

Regards. dongdongdongdongchiang

as jeffblazed said, in short, not asking for everything ready made, but look for the answer yourself, asking is simply one of the method.

This post has been edited by rexis: Feb 18 2007, 02:30 AM

Panda should be rearing freshwater fish, haha kiddings, I think the easiest way to find this out is to pay RM5950 for a full package of 25 days of courses including theories and practical (www.todayaqua.com) or a mere RM580 for 2 weekends (Sat and Sun) courses about almost anything you need to know and who to call in rearing fish, also, they provide many other agri short courses too, like the one i am planning to take, dipping system organic vegetables(03-21424046, call they to know what they have now).

Basically you can also get to know all these from some agriculture magazine like the one I have(unfortunately, I am unable to join the gathering @ taman congnaught).

Fish marketing - first ask yourself, where can you get fish? Pasar pagi, seafood restaurant, ikan bakar stall... yup, go ask whether they want to buy fish. As simple as that. Oh, and dont stop asking when 10/20 of them turn you down, keep on asking.

Fish Food - ask the vendor, usually they can provide some extra tips or information, how much, how frequent, etc. Also dont forget about all those supplyment to make your fish happier and healthier, fish food vendors will have an idea about them.

Utility bills - how big is your pool? What is your fish density? Electric or diesel engine? All these will justify your bills.

Fish Survival - Usually the fish seed vendor have a figure about how many % of your seed can reach adulthood, provided the proper condition of course, like outside pool or concrete pool? Or the circulation system Para mentioned? The later one surely can increase the survival rate. Also, keep the fish well fed can inprove the survival rate - otherwise some hungry fish species will eat their own kind.

Transport - Lori rental? Or purchase lorry yourself? With fridge or without. You prefer to look for vendors who go straight to your farm? Or you want to fetch your goods to the fish market for better price? Compare these, and compare with the fuel cost. Then you will have a rough figure.

Maintanence - (actually utility bill is part of maintanence)so are you doing two job? Or you planning to take care the farm yourself?

Worker - How big is your farm? Do you need a worker? How many worker?(refer above) Where are your farm(KL indon workers RM800 monthly, Kelantan local workers RM300 will do), you can try get one or two helpers and increase or decrease them when required.

land - rent or own land? Usually the land problem need to figure out yourself? Keep asking and looking is the key.

Water - salt water or fresh water? Surely you need a water source nearby, usually openair pools dont use filter, they simply change water. And surely its very tough to rear grouper in midland(though not impossible)! you would want somewhere near sea, or on sea.

Sorry, I dont have an exact numbers here. The above are barely some road signs, not destinations.

Hi guys, it is really a good idea to held a visiting to para farm.

Ehh? I tot you rearing fish, why construct a compost pit?

How big is the piece of land?

You can plant dragon fruit/pitaya, these cactus do not need that much of care, and they will start fruiting pretty fast, some within 9 month to get the first batch of fruits. And they fetch quite a good market price too, if you can find the market of course. And theres one case i read about is

a pitaya farmer actually transplanted all his pitaya to another land, dig the whole thing out including the supporting pilla, 100% survival. Just in case your landlord want to take back his land in future.

Or you can consider some short tern crops like jagung, chilli. Sweetcorn perhaps not that good price but the market is there. Cili padi have a good price and can harvest relatively fast.

Or build a goat barn there, buy in a few baby goat, and feed them for a few month, then sell them, fast money. But if you are not that keen on rearing mutton...

If its not really a big plot of land, you can consider make compost pile from it, get lots of chicken/goat/cow manure and mix them with grass chippings and compost bacteria, turn them weekly and 1.5 months later you will have lots of compost. You should be able to get some RM300/ton, you dont really need that much space to accumulate 10 tons of these organic fertilizer you know.

Herbs, perhaps you can ask pejabat petanian about this.

Or if you not really that urgently want to make money with this piece of land, plant some flower/fruit trees you like and make it into a nice garden where you can really relax. We should really enjoy our life you see.

Some add on, i read about a banana farmer actually plant cili padi among his banana plants, the income from the cili can actually pay up his workers salary. But it is not like you can plant cili among your fish thou...

Mmmm, high value fresh water fish to rear... its gotta be soon hok. The fresh one fetch a good price. Talapia and Keli is your laaaast choice. OR you can even consider pet fish! Like koi, gold fish, etc.

Wooo, if those lovely tanks under my procession i will make them into giant composting tanks... thats what i am up to recently. I know how to make compost, but how good is the end product, will it grow or kill vegetables, might be able to find out 3 months later.

I once calculated if you cover your acre with 4 feet deep dead plants + chicken manure you will have some half of million $ worth of compost a few months later. Well, i always dreaming about things thats too good to be true, so the actual value might me *slightly* lower...

I read about a factory actually collect vegetable and fruit waste from pasar borong and grind them into bits, mix with goat manure, and let them rot for 45 days, then you got organic fertilizer. They selling it some half a $ per kg and have some 150k worth of business monthly.

Waste to cash. Tats the way to go.

No, i do not have any property, land is wat i am looking for now, and also the initiative to start something, rather then keep talking/ranting.

Heres another landlord!

Sound like you are somewhere in johor, i read about the sweet corn planters there exporting baby corn to s'pore too. Also, about the durian, yeah, durian market is too satuated, common species like D24 pricing is so.... i read about another article bout a deer rearer feed his D24 to his live stock

There are certain species still remain high price. Like mountain cat king, red prawn, "khuan yuk/kun yu". And you mentioned about exporting too, exporting is a very important way to ensure success too. You should pay attension to the international market requirement. Example, long lasting, pesticide residue, etc.

Its already an information center here

Para, have you thought about replicating the river environment to make your fish tastier? Like adding in some water jet stream, make some artificial waterfall, etc. ust a thought. Not sure how will it end up like but for sure will add COST, hahaha.

Theres another article i read about is this guy rearing talapia in prawn pool with salt water, the end result is a tastier and better meat texture fish compare to freshwater talapia. (note: talapia can survive in both fresh and salt water, can do by slowly increasing the salt content, just dont them straight away into sea!)

Oh yeah, i know you should not rear talapia any idea about what fish yet?

How about learn to breed fish? Then sell baby fish? Like that you only need a few adult fish and the proper skill and your fish farm can start production right away.

Here is how you grow a mushroom.

Basically it involved:
- prepare growing medium, a jelly-like nutrient for mushroom.
- prepare mushroom parts, basically you can buy fresh mushroom from hypermarket.
- getting a pure mushroom mycelium, aka mushroom cells, you dont want any other things mixed inside.
- create mushroom spawn using the pure mycelium, thats basically is to create more mycelium with your available stock.
- plant your mycelium and wait it grow into a mushroom!
- prepare tempura flour and vegetable oil for frying.
- fry your mushroom
- eat your mushroom
- and hopefully you dont get sick

---

Added on May 17, 2007, 8:53 amNow, according to the notes, I made the growing medium using the recipe provided: boiled potato water + glucose + agar-agar(jelly), and let them coat inside a glass, refer the notes above for how to sterilize the glass + medium, and then I extracted some clean oyster mushroom tissue, it must be absolutely clean so the following steps must be taken:

- find a room with still air and minimal dust, I choose bath room, spray the room with water and hopefully get the dust particles in air will go away with water.
- and i need a clean surface, i used a piece of window glass, slightly heat it on top of the stove to kill all bacteria on it.
- all equipments: a nail sissors, a clip(the one they used to clean bird nest) are all sterilized by stove as well, not a single spore or bacteria are allowed or you will skrew the whole thing.
- okay, prepare the mushroom, tear it and use the sissor to cut a piece of the middle part of mushroom tissue, and place it on top of the prepared growing medium in glass.
- immediately cover the top of glass with aluminium foil, then use a lighter to burn the side of the cover for precaution.
- then place the glasses with mushroom tissue in a dark cool place and wait.

I prepared 4 glasses at my first try, something are happening there anyhow this is what i got.
- glass 1 filled with cotton-like white tiny fibre, i think they are pure oyster mushroom mycelium(success)
- glass 2 filled with cotton-like white fibre too, but less then glass 1, I think this means this breed is not as vigorous as glass 1.
- glass 3 filled with cotton-like white fibre BUT some green stuff are occuring too, i guess this means it is containminated, it can be thrown away now, anyhow i am keeping it for fun.
- glass 4 is containminated with brownish stuff.

Thats a 50% containmination rate, perhaps that means bathroom is not clean enough to do experiment like this.

I will be start to breed the mushroom spawn(using rice) soon, spawn can then be used to plant into sawdust and then fruit mushroom. Need to start sterilize the stuff soon.

Will take some snapshot if possible.

Cheers. QnA welcomed. Read notes first before asking your lecturer

This post has been edited by rexis: May 17 2007, 08:53 AM

It is especially inspiring whenever I read about any IT guy venturing into this field, or any other field. One really should not limit themselves by a piece a paper.

Some said with a higher education cert will open up more opportunities to us, but I think this piece of paper just limiting one self. Thats what decide someone to be an accountant or analyst, that is a limitation. In the end, even if you hate accounting or programming so much, you have to bear with it.

Open up yourself for greater opportunities.

---------

Dont have any direction? Want to know what you will become after 5 or even 10 years? There is a fast way to get some idea about it. Just look at your boss, or any of your senior colleagues, and ask yourself, do you really want to be like them?

Find an inspiration, and follow their path. At least you know what you want and what you need to do.

Malaysia is a tropical country, a lot of unique flora and fauna can be found here, and a significant number of them has medical use. If this can be done properly, herbs can become malaysia 2nd oil palm.

There is a saying that a weed is a plant that its use has yet to be discovered.

But saying is saying, doing is another thing, we need the proper department to do scientific research on this, prove the usage properly, not just some user testimonia. That is the important step to put us on a bigger screen.

And so we require:
- research - which one is useful, or what recipe can be made into drink
- production method - how to farm them commercially
- processing method - ways to preserve its properties
- marketing - steps to create the demand

Thats the way I would want to go.

And nothing could stop you to earn more after you earn your first fish million. And hope you can write this down big enough for you to see it once everyday, and read it out loud every morning.



This post has been edited by rexis: May 29 2007, 02:00 PM

Not only applicable to pond, but to land or any property as well. Who knows the cheap land you bought actually was a JE pig burial ground...

If bought a non suitable pond(or land) for your prawns also nevermind, just find another suitable product, talapia? Or even use it to plant lotus(lotus has market). Remember, be flexible a bit.

First batch of what fish? You finally decided to breed sook hock?

Jatropha: The Biodiesel Tree Rush

Most of you must have heard about Malaysia's plan to add 5% palm oil into diesel to cut down fossil fuel, doesn't matter whats the intension is(environment or profit), this has no doubt created a whirlpool of biofuel rush in Malaysia.

And then the plans to make palm oil biodiesel and export them to Europe, however this has been set back by several factor:
- palm oil price sky rocketed from RM1600 to RM2500 per MT, making it meaningless to make a biodiesel that is so much more expensive then regular diesel
- Europian countries starting to boycott palm oil, they think that we kill off orang hutan, rain forest and unlocking carbon deposite of peat lands(means air pollution and global warming), so palm oil is not green at all.

So, until not so long ago, the agriworld magazine has posted a few articles about this plant, Jatropha. I believe that there are a few other source that was talking about this wonderful miracle biodiesel tree. This has catch attension on the agricultural community. Everybody will be interested to grab a piece from this biofuel pie, people are interested to know or even starting to plant Jatropha at their farm.

Indian has done so much promotion about this plant, that they will use its oil producing seed to replace part of their fossil fuel demand and protect the environment.

Jatropha profile:
- It is a drought resistance tree that can trive on almost any kind of soil, including rocky soil. The plant can widthstand up to 3 years of drought by shreding all its leaves.
- Jatropha seeds has oil content of 35%-50% which can be used to produce Jatropha oil, but due to that the oil is poisonious and non eatable, it is very suitable in making biodiesel, and no moral issue about food or fuel matter.
- Jatropha can be productive for up to 50 years.
- Jatropha can improve the soil quality by covering the barren land with fallen leaves and therefore create a layer of compost.

Jatropha advantages as promoted:
- Since it grows anywhere, it required little care, you can plant them on desert and some years later turning the place into a secondary forest + oil production.
- It is said that it can produce up to 1800 liters of oil per ha per year.
- It can improve soil condition, therefore suitable to plant on lands that unsuitable to other crops, like acidic soil, prevent corrosion, and all those environmental improvement benefits.

You can get more information over the internet, but such a benefitial plant, which almost perfect as a primary oil crop, will certainly welcomed by those so called "environmental concerned" european countries.

But some people are not getting the point here, by rushing into planting the plant, like there were some small scale plantation already planting Jatropha in Malaysia without even understand the plant properly, will only result in failure and end up with tons of useless seeds.

There are a few key factors that whoever want to plant this as a primary oil crop must know:

- India is the one who considering this plant, because india has a lot of dry land that do not receive rainfall and their people not even have enough water to drink, therefore drought resistance properties will be really useful to them. But Malaysia has plenty of rain, we have better option.
- It was intented to plant on poor soil condition, if you have a land in Malaysia here and decided to plant Jatropha, you might as well plant oil palm because our lands are more fertile, and produce at least 5 times more oil.
- Whats the point of environment protection if you still clearing forest to plant Jatropha? The european people wont like it either.
- WE DO NOT HAVE A MARKET FOR JATROPHA SEED/OIL. At the moment the main market for jatropha seeds is not for oil, but sell as planting material at a very high price.
- We do not have any factories that produce jatropha oil.
- In reality at India, Jatropha production never exceed 400 liters of oil per ha, this is close to soya bean, which is very disappointing, therefore the Jatropha profit return is more like made up figure.
- it is very hard to harvest the Jatropha fruit and very hard to extract the oil from the seeds, you also need to take the seeds out of the fruit as well, very labour intensive work.
- even though jatropha can survive on very harsh condition, proper irrigation and fertilizer still require to get a meaningful yield.
- Jatropha is not properly understood yet, it is relatively new crop.

Jatropha is suitable if
- it is planted as marginal plant, like by the roadside, surrounding your farm, and and you can produce the oil for your own/local use, whats the point spending more fuel to transport the fuel to far far away?
- you have a very large piece of barren land with infertile soil that unsuitable for any crops.
- plant one or two in your garden for decoration

Hopefully you learned something here

Reference: Journey to forever mail group

This post has been edited by rexis: Jun 27 2007, 03:54 PM

Time to bumb this thread a bit.

Lets talk about some non-conventional crops.

Castor Plant

Castor seed has a high oil content of around 50% of weight ratio therefore castor often planted for the oil. Castor oil is one of the oldest traded goods in human history, evidence discovered that it is traded over 5000 years ago in Egypt as a lamp oil.

Castor oil is a unique kind of oil due to the oil structure, and it is the only vegetable oil that is soluble in alcohol. Its chemical properties make it a very useful industrial raw material in industrials like cosmetic, food, paint, and engine lubricant. The famous Castrol get its name from the plant, castor oil can bond to the metal part evently and very consistance in viciousity over different range of temperature, as well as a very low solidfying point of 15 degree C.

The main producer of castor oil of the world is india and china, mainly export to europe and united states. Castor plants used to be planted in United States as an annual crop but it was stopped somewhere in the 60's for certain reason and nowadays it grew as a fast growing weed along the highways of USA.

Castor plant has been notorious due to their poison ricin, ricin is said to be the most poisonious natural poison, 12000 times more poisonious then king cobra venom and 6000 times then cynide. It is said that it only take one fruit(3 seeds) to kill a child. Due to the poisonious properties ricin has been an option in chemical warfare, assasination, and terrorist activities. Perhaps this is why USA stop planting this crop.

Castor plant grow on well drained and slightly acidic soil, it is drought resistance and fast growing. A larger kind of species can reach over 20 feet in height in only a summer season before the frost come in and kill it. And the smaller species is only about 5 feet. In tropical countries it is often seen growing in wild and cleared land like idle housing land and beside monsoon drain.

Obviously planting a crop you need to secure a market for it, before you ever considering this crop other then decoration plant, you should make sure there is a demand first. Basically it is uncommon to invest this crop in Malaysia.

You can sometimes seen this plant in the wild or near the longkang. Its leaves range from dark green to a beautiful red colour, the young seed pod looks like young rambutan fruit and when it is ripe and dried, the seed inside the pod looks like a miniature rubber tree seed, together with the beautiful stripe on top, therefore extreme caution is needed if for any reason there is a few castor plants near your neighbourhood, especially kids.

Castor oil is also being promoted as a possible source of biofuel due the the high oil content and non ediable oil. The castor oil is very visious even after esterification(ie convert to biodiesel), it is 100 times more vicious then regular diesel, but there is always ways to make it run in a diesel engine.

Just a note, interestingly, castor oil do not contain the ricin poison, as ricin is water soluble and insoluable in oil. So ricin is left in seedcake during oil press process.

To know more, read the following:
Castor Wiki

Home grown vege for everyone

Everybody talk about commercial farming, about some large scale plantation that using machines to do all the works, and actually, we mostly as normal consumers, are the one eating the product, so what are we eating actually? Vitamin sellers will scare you by saying that you are like eating tissue paper, organic sellers will take the opportunities to sell you expensive vege and frighten you with pesticide and fertilizer stories, and we are so paranoid that we scrub and wash every single piece of vege leaves fearing something alien is hidden within...

So, you happened to have a small space with sunlight, or even just an idle window at your apartment, yes, you can do it, you can grow your own vegetable!

There are two ways to go

Garden farming
You have an empty garden, idle soil, and decided to make some use and do some workout, very well! There you go!

Lets start with a little shopping list first, note you might be able to utilize your available garden tools!
- shovel or cangkul(ACE hardware or DIY store)
- support sticks(chop from roadside bushes or buy PVC tubes)
- sun block netting(optional, try ask in DIY store)
- chicken dropping(composted or dried, can buy from those gardening shop)
- organic fertilizer(can use composted chicken sh!t too)
- sowing kit(those square plate we used to take food in Mcdonal, coconut husk, gardening shop)
- last but not least, seeds, off course.(hypermarket, gardening shop, or even seeds vendor)

Grab your cangkul or shovel and start to loosen the soil, and spread the chicken dropping in as base fertilizer, arrange your soil to make a long bed of bumb, and then wait, let the soil and fertilizer settle down a bit. Now go to your 2nd step, sowing(aka nursing).

First use an old cloth and soak it in water then squezz it to half dry, use it to cover the seeds you are going to plant and leave it overnite, this will like wake up the seeds from deep sleep and it will start to grow into seedlings.

Then prepare the plates filled with coconut husk, and also make sure its wet, insert the seeds. Maintain the moisture until young leaves pop out. You can use cardboard to devide the coconut husk into smaller boxes so you can seperate them easier, or use small containers/plastic bags filled with husk, use your creativity here.

A week later, young seedlings should be poping out from the husk, but they wont last long that way, water alone is not enough, the coconut husk do not contain any nutrition, so its time to move them into soil! First discard any seedlings tat looks unhealthy or small, only use the strong one.

After the selection, what you do is simply plant the seedlings into the soil and water them, water them regularily or according to weather(eg, rain means no need water) and apply chicken dropping compost weekly for vigorious growth, do not over fertilized it thou, when the plant looks sick, means something is lacking or too much.

About the supporting stick and sunblock netting, its all according to the choice of vegetable you have, for example bitter gourd will need some supporting sticks to crawl on, and sawi will need sun block netting to advoid sun burn.

This is actually a very simple guide, about how much/how to apply fertilizer, how much water, how many plants in one unit area, when harvest.... this, you will find out in the process of home vegetable growing. Enjoy!

There are a few more tips thou:
- if you garden soil quality is poor, like harden clay or sand, mix organic matter into it, like coconut husk or potting compost, this will improve water retention and air ventilation.
- cover a layer of coconut husk/dried grass on top of your soil to retain moisture.
- you might encounter some other insects trying to share your crop, there is no need to spray shieldtox or use pesticide, simply hand pick them(or use a clip) away since its not a big farm so its a feasible way.
- there are plant suppliment available in store to make your crop grow bigger and better, furthermore they are organic.

Now what i just mentioned is simply growing vege in your own garden, what if you do not have a garden? Or your garden has no soil? Very easy, lets go hydroponic then... tbc.

This post has been edited by rexis: Jul 23 2007, 03:56 PM

ishh ishh, when i google for mushroom growing information, it lead back to here....

No problem bro, i am not worrying about raising mushroom, they are selling those mushroom kit for RM1.20 each, u just need to water it and wait. Besides, most suppliers will teach you how you grow your seeds(make sense to do long term business).

Soon Hock Raising Techniques

(Summarised from AgriWorld Feb 2006)

Soon Hock scientific name is Oxyeleotris Marmoratus, it can grow up to 60cm and 5-6kg, it is a kind of predatoric fish, shade loving, prefer to hide among the rocks and seldom swim around. Compare to other predatoric fish(eg, arowana, piranha) it is quite tame, and usually just stay idle and motionless in water, only when their food(small prawn, fish) get near them, they will be fierce and able to hunt their prey with great agility and speed. It is suitable in water temperature 25-30 degree celcius, PH 7-8.5, salt density 10-15ppt.

There are a lot of prawn farmers raising soon hock in Teluk Jaya, Johor, but due to being a commercial secret, they kept low profile on what they are doing. A prawn farmer from there informed the writer that he actually have farmed soon hock for few years. according to him, for fish seeds of 20-30 fish per kg will take one year to grow up to 800-1000g with >80% survival. Recently the low price of tiger prawn has caused many prawn farmers switched to soon hock.

Soon hock feed on different kind of food in different stage of their life. For 1.5 - 2.5cm size, they feed on Moina or Daphia copepod live culture, when they reach 5cm size, they can feed on small prawns and red worms. When the young soon hocks reach 12-14cm and weight 30-50g each, under farming condition we can start to tame and feed them with man made food, and feed them with fresh chopped fish or sinking fish feed.

Under good water condition,
- 2-2.5cm size will take 1 month to grow to 4-5cm size
- 4-5cm size will take 4-5 months to grow to 12cm/30-50g
- 30-50g size will take 6 months to reach above 600g, which is the marketable size.
- it will take 12-14 months to complete each cycle.

There are two way to farm Soon Hock:

1) net cage, using PE fish net, 30-50g fish seed can be kept in 1.5cm(hole size) of net cage, which 100g fish seed can stay in 2.5cm net cage. Each net cage can use either 3mx4m or 4mx6m with deep 1.2m size, the edge should be 20cm above water surface, which there should be at least more then 20cm from the bottom(of pond). You can place net cage at river, mine lake, or pond. Farming density should be:
- 30-40 fish per meter cube for 30-50g size
- 15-20 fish per meter cube for 80g size
Each net cage should have two feeding baskets(perhaps means you put the feed on top and lower them into water with a rope etc), feed once daily, and check and clean the feeding baskets every morning.

2) pond farming, usually each pond hv 2000-4000 square meters, with depth of 1.2m, fish density 4.5 fish per square meter, place some PVC tube in the pond for the fish to hide. Each pond of similar size can put in 500 river prawn or river fish which can form a food chain. Prawns not only a very good soon hock food, but can help to clean up food residue as well, therefore maintain the water quality.

(the author is from Sepang Today Aquaculture)
(actually the article also mentioned about breeding your own fish seed, bt why not just get them directly from supplier first)



Case Study

Paraopticfarm (our thread starter farm)

Para rented a land with a river passing by, he has laid concrete floor and placed large water tank and prepared to raise fish. He recently got a batch of soon hock fish seed and wondering how to take care of them.

According to the info above, we can get an idea about what is the fish density we should use:
- 30-40 fish per meter cube for 30-50g size
- 15-20 fish per meter cube for 80g size
This is for a pond, so for fish container with all the water processing system/filter, we should try to look at higher density, just try to add 20% more fish then the recommended density and try out, do regular observation and so on, you can try to double the population but you might get lower survival rate.

And we need to make some place for the fish to hide, as recommended above, PVC tube can be a good choice, the article didnt say a thing about do we need to use different PVC size for different fish size so i am assuming one size fits all, use those big PVC tube which usually we use for water drainage, cut them into like 2.5 feet long and tie them in one big bunch like how we tie up a bunch of dynamite then sink them into water. (It really feel like building fish condo now!) Also try not to make the opening facing each other, the purpose of hiding is not to see others, but this is just imho.

You have to make sure the PVC tube do not block the water circulation thou.

Feed the fish as recommended above, about where to get those fish feed:
- try if you can net any tiny fish tadpodes from the river that running thru your land
- get fish discards(fish heads, etc) from fish cake factory daily
- use ready made fish feed, train your soon hock to adapt to them
- once a while, feed your fish with nutricious meal, like redworm, mealworm, etc. Normally not recommended to get them from a petshop thou you can find them there, try get a distributor for bulk ordering. If you have the time, you can even consider breeding your own mealworm colony!

If you considering mixing in fresh water prawns/fish into the tank, i think not, because it is already pretty packed and thurs i dont think the small fish/prawns will stand a change. Perhaps keep them at another tank, keep them healthy so they start multiplying and thurs provide you part of the fish food. Theres another article that a soon hock farmer actually putting adult talapia in his fish pond so the talapia will produce small talapia, and thus soon hock will hv extra fresh food, he is decorating his pond as natural as possible.

(disclaimer: the case study is purely a direct analysis of the information available, I am not a professional fish farmer therefore the above are just IMHO.)

This post has been edited by rexis: Aug 29 2007, 01:32 PM

whao your soon hock so big already? I thought u r buying some tiny fish baby.

I read about an article that the fish farmer keeping some mature talapia in his soon hock pool to breed up some baby talapia for the soon hock as snack. Consider that too.

And since u said u hv a river nearby? So water shouldn't be an issue, try change water a lot instead of relying heavily on filter, and also try to figure out a way to harness the river energy to pump your water(water mill, gravity, etc) it is really a good idea to lower your utility bill.

This post has been edited by rexis: Sep 18 2007, 10:17 AM

Haha, dun imagin a complicated generator with one end dip in the river and another end hook up with power cables. Im just talking about some plain mechanical water mill that use river flow to spin a pump or something, there isnt any commercial design on the market as far as i know. Perhaps you can really work out some design and prototype! Remember, our country is doing lots of agriculture and we are having lots of river too, tats a big market for it.

Its nothing too complicated, serious, i hv seen(book, tv, natgeo) bamboo water pump that able to scoop water and pour them on a higher point to a leading bamboo pipe and lead it to padi field, theres even a fish catcher that able to scoop up salmon from river using the river flow energy.

Once u got good product, dun worry about buyers

If u say that ur pump is there to supply oxygen, consider adding more twist or maybe some stair case in the leading in water to create more swirl, it helps. Of course, mechanical pump is desire for constant supply, but I think your fish density is not tat high yet.

I think he means all the pic except the first one, why so milky ah? But as far as i know, in nature, water usually wont be crystal clear.