Do you know you can rear catfishes in your backyards, without actually digging a fish pond?, Today, we will be looking at ways you can start raring catfishes in a small way with a pond before then graduating into a full blown fish farmer.

Cat fish is protein filled, having several vitamins and minerals, this makes it a very sort after fish. A lot of Nigerians take the fish as pepper soup of as roasted.

One of the reasons why it is coming a very lucrative business in Nigeria, is because a lot of beer parlors and football viewing centres are opening and people prefer to drink their beers with wither pepper soup or roasted catfish.

Some people some export the smoked and dried catfish oversea as it is a well sort after fish over there.

The popular and most common way people have been raring cat fish, is by creating ponds for the fishes, making the business expensive to startup, as it will require land to dig and space to keep water tanks and other equipments. So if you’re not a land owner, you will not be able to afford this method of rearing fishes.

The fish farming method we will be discussing today is less expensive to start, you only need to be committed to changing the water often, depending of the location where you choose to use.

Before you startup, you will need to create a little space in your house that will be close to a gutter where the dirty water will drained.

You can choose to drain the water into the gutter or into a water closet in your apartment. If you choose to drain the water into the water closet, you must always pour some amount of kerosene inside your water closet to scare away reptiles including snakes, as they can be attracted by the crumbs from the fish feeds.

Starting up, you will need a small plastic baff or bowl in place of the regular pond, where you’ll put the fish fingerlings in water inside the bowl. As they grow, you’ll change the bowl into a bigger own. It takes about 3 to 6months for them to become matured enough sales.

You will also need a sieve to drain the dirty water so the sieve will hold the fishes from flushing away.

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When I started up mine, I started with just a plastic bowl and all I needed to do daily was to drain the water into a bucket, with the aid of the sieve.

You must be consistent in removing the water everyday, this is because the water stinks, the stinking water is as a result of the smelling feeds. This means not changing the water everyday can make your house and the whole compound smell as a result of the stink.

To make it easy for you to drain the water, you can fix a pipe through the bowl and drain the water, this way, you will need need to always carry the bowl and drain with a sieve.

What Intrt was doing before now was very stressful as they grew, sometimes when I try to sieve the water away, I some of the fish usually jump off, fall sick (one of the signs that they are sick is not eating), while some hit their heads on the side of the bucket, giving them various injuries, which might also make them prone to attacks by other fishes. Once there is a wound on the body of a fish, others will take advantage of it when they are hungry and feed on the injured fish.

So I decided to get a bigger baff, called a plumber to connect a small pipe to the baff, where I can easily drain water from. It became very easy afterwards and the fishes became healthier and grew bigger.

Below are few tips to help you start up within your home

* There should be space in your home, like a store, a wide kitchen, backyard etc.

* Be sure to have a place to always drain the water before even thinking of starting, if the outlets to water is not a gutter or a soak away, it might not be too advisable to start in your home, using this method.

*Find out where you can buy fingerings around your area( some sell one fingering at N30 for 1piece, but many sellers won’t sell to you, if you will not buy up to 100 Pieces). Don’t start with too much, you can start with about 100 or 150 piece, so as to text run.

* Buy baffs that can size into the space you have (you’ll get a very big baff for N2000) while there are others that are cheaper.

* Connect a drainage pipe to the baff, short or long. This is dependent on where you want to be draining the water to.

*Make sure you change the water regularly

* Their feeds are not too expensive. Note that the bigger they grow, the more food they will consume.

* As they get bigger, get a transparent net to cover the bowl, to avoid them jumping out of it.

*Be patient, it takes about 5-6 months for them to grow very well, if they are of the growing species. So don’t rush yourself by over feeding them hoping to see them grow hurriedly.

With these few tips, you can start up a small cat fish business within your home.

Tags: catfish