The Forth Batch

Introduction

After having experince in rearing fish for the following batches:

First batch: 150 tails of cat fish
2nd batch: 40 tails of Tilapia Nile
3rd batch: 40 tails of Pantin

I am ready to rear more fishes after I move to USJ 1. This time, I decided to rear 90 tails of tilapia Nile in the beginning of August 2007. Six months later which is close to Chinese New Year 2008, we should have more than enough fish for our new year celebration.

My ponds

Here I have 2 ponds, 1 is a fibre tank measuring 6'x4'x2.5' and the other is a concrete cement pond measuring 10'x2'x1'.

Fibre tank.

I purchased this fibre tank from one of the aquarium shop and placed it in the laundry area which is at the back of the house. This place is not so much expose to sun light and most importantly, the area is secured by sliding grill. In this pond I put in 60 tails of fish fries purchased from Mr. See. Length of the fries are about 4".

Cement pond (Planter pond)

This cement pond was originally meant to use as a planter box. It is located just beside the car porch and it has good sun light exposure. I worked on the conversion of the planter box over the weekend over a period of few weeks. A small section of it I use it for filtering purpose. I will call this pond by its original usage name. In this pond, I put in 30 tails of tilapia nile, same batch that I purchased from Mr. See.


These tilapia nile together with some koi fish, 'Bak Su Kong' in the pond, there are about 40 tails in total.









The intial 3 months growth

This is the first time I have a chance to rear fish with sun light exposure and be able to compare them with those rear in house. The result is fantastic. Those in the Planter pond grew much faster than those in the fibre tank! In the first 3 months, on average they are almost half the size bigger than those in the fibre tank.

The next 3 months growth

In the next months that follow, however, the situation changed. The planter pond became so crowded (I have only about 10" of water depth) so the fishes' growth are slowing down. We notice those in the fibre tank is getting bigger than those in the planter box.

As a result of this finding, I realize that:

i) Fish grows faster with sun light
ii) Fish also will grow bigger with bigger pond









On the left is a picture taken from the planter pond. Tilapia Nile has very beautiful pink color body and I really like their colour exspecially in the evening when you look at them about 10 feets away.

Every year has fish (Nian nian u yu)

This Chinese New Year 2008, the fishes are big enough for our consumption. Chinese has one saying in Mandarin "Nian nian u yu" which means every year you shall have some harvest left. In the older days, farmers shall be very happy if they have some harvest left at the end of the year, when the new year come, they will have new harvest and if every year they have some harvest left that means they will not be starving in the future and they will become richer.






The picture on the left: 800 grams








After about 6 months of carefully taking care of the fishes, they grew into a weigh range of 600 grams to 800 grams. We tried the first one, it is so fresh and taste well.

We gave some to our relative and neighbour and also didn't forget to wish them "Nian Nian U Yu".