Fish

 What kind of Fish to choose

It is proving to be quite a difficult decision to make; deciding what type/s of fresh water fish or other creatures to have in my Aquaponic System.

To the right is a picture of some Catfish.  Many fresh water species of Catfish exist, lots of them are tropical.  They fetch quite a good price, I believe.

The chip shop in the near-by village of Horrabridge sells battered Catfish, from Vietnam, and have been doing so for years.  They seem to sell well.  I think organically grown ones, from an Aquaponics system, produced locally, in the UK, would be better for them though.

My choices are:

Tropical Fish

There are two possible markets here; tropical ornamental fish, which I could breed and sell to pet shops or Tropical river or lake fish, meant for the table.

Just a quick peep in a freezer compartment in any Bangladeshi shop, will give you many wonderful examples of what I mean, by tropical table fish.  You see; because Bangladesh is a mostly flat country, if you want a pond, all you have to do is to dig a hole.  The water table is high and Little else needs to be done.  The result of this is that Bangladeshis eat allot of fresh water fish.  It must cost them quite a bit to import these fish, frozen, all the way from South Asia, so perhaps they'd like to buy them fresh and organic, from me instead.

Ornamental Fish

I am thinking here; mainly things like Goldfish and Koi carp.  Again with pet shops being possibly my main buyers, or I could sell them directly to the public.  They are fairly easy to breed.  I have bread them before and there is a huge market for them here in the UK.

River Fish

Here; I am thinking Trout and Carp, something like that.  Always popular and usually very expensive and out of the price range for most people.  Aquaponics will change all that.

There are also many other species of river fish from all over the world.  The effect warm water has on a cold blooded creature, is to make it grow much faster, making me even more competitive with traditional Trout farms, etc.

Other kinds of fresh water creatures

Here, I am thinking along the lines of fresh water Prawns and Cray- fish, maybe even Eels, who knows.  I have seen lots of videos on you tube, with such systems successfully put in place.

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What ever I choose, I would appear to have a very competitive edge on any market I entered into.

Each poly tunnel should have at least two massive ponds, each running the whole length of the tunnels.  So perhaps I will try a few different things.  I certainly prefer the idea of having edible fish better, but I think I would  like to have a variety of different species to try.