A question about Cat Fish Farming

[ray23]

They seem easy compared to Pla Nin. But, Thai's like them so small seem very difficult to make a profit feed them. So I got to be doing something wrong. so how do you get through this problem. At the rate I'm going I won't make a profit with the cost of feed.

I have the light over the pond now, they are at the size the locals like but, it takes up to six to make a kilo, So I'm not feeding anymore. I'm only running 400 at the moment.

What am I doing wrong?

[justben]

To make profit you feed them factory and restaurant waste. The extensive discussion between Thais on the internet confirms this. The feed is expensive for a reason... look who produces it and what other things they produce ;p

[RedBullHorn]

To make profit you feed them factory and restaurant waste. The extensive discussion between Thais on the internet confirms this. The feed is expensive for a reason... look who produces it and what other things they produce ;p

HaaaaChoo!!! Must be the weather...

[RedBullHorn]

400 what ? ray23, you need to provide more detail... like pond size, water depth, mudbed depth, stocking rate, feed type/brand, fingerling size, period of raring, water quality.....etc etc.

A customer whom I've guided just completed his harvest of his pond including final pond clearing, 10'000 fishes, 113 sack of pellet feed (grade A and Premium), yield 1'830kg, FCR 1.23:1, 2 months & 15 days, fingerlings size 2''-3'', yield size 3,4,5 fishes/kg, total cost ฿67'000.- (miscellaneous & variable cost included)

Farmgate price ฿46/kg (Chiang Rai), revenue : ฿84'180.-

Nett Profit : ฿17'180.-

(Nothing is free, i charge a consultation fee for guaranteed success ! Moneyback of course. )

Edited June 26, 2013 by RedBullHorn

[justben]

I think he meant pla duk.

Those are good figures RedBullHorn. I'm sure many many Thai folk doing this would love to be using pellet feed only. Must be a lot faster as well. From what I've seen here in Chiang Mai, junk from chicken slaughter is what they like.

What is the land area of this customer's pond?

Edited June 26, 2013 by justben

[ray23]

Well a small pond 3 meters by 6 meters 2 meters deep, currently 400 Pla Duk. With those numbers much better profit in Mushrooms. With that size pond I think 400 is pushing it. I'm paying 450 baht for large pellets 20 Kilo bags. used 1.5 an 1 bag of starter feed. They are ready for harvest now. But I don't have an outlet for 400 at once. To me the numbers just don't work out to see any profit at all.

Restaurants hadn't thought of that. I can look into that. With commercial feed just don't see where it will work out a Thia suggested I put a 1000 in that space is that even possible?

Even if it is I don't see a profit that will just mean more food and that's the real expense.

Well thanks for the real numbers I guess I will enjoy some cat fish dinners

[RedBullHorn]

I think he meant pla duk.

Those are good figures RedBullHorn. I'm sure many many Thai folk doing this would love to be using pellet feed only. Must be a lot faster as well. From what I've seen here in Chiang Mai, junk from chicken slaughter is what they like.

What is the land area of this customer's pond?

500 sqm, mudbed depth 40cm, water depth (measured from top of mudbed) - 160cm. Total depth - 2 meter.

The OP topic title is Catfish - Pla Duk. His first sentence also refered to Pla Duk in comparison to Pla Nim too.

Many many Thai folks doing this are actually using pellet fish only, be it Pla Duk or Pla Nim.

Kitchen waste and food scraps from hospitals, army barracks are basically free of charge as long as you could place your many 200L PVC barrels on location and transport them. There's a contract and penalty for not fulfilling the obligation as schduled.

At a nett profit of ฿1.70 a fish with 0 mortality, it's an excellent figures.

My consultation fee from this police captain customer - a case of Lao Khao.

Edited June 27, 2013 by RedBullHorn

[David48]

Mate ... a friend of mine sent me this ...

Maybe it's sleeping ...

.

[ray23]

I noticed that the cat fish we have in the holding tank waiting for sale, pretty much lay around on the bottom. So maybe he catching a nap

[pigeonjake]

ray,im no

t having a go at you, but you seem to of chucked a load of fish in some water fed them for a while,

now you have 400 fish ready to go and nowere to take them,

didnt you think that once they were ready you could have to get rid of them, you say you have stoped feeding them now,

im no expert but i think they will start eating each other,

cat fish do this,

we read it on here many times, im going to start farming this or that,

no thought of were they are going to sell the end product,

before we started keeping pigs i read and read on here,, i went round talking to local farmers round me, to see, first if there was space for me to rear a few pigs, and not tred on to many toes,

then i was asking for numbers of people who come and buy,

you have to get lots of things in order first before you should even start to get your fish/chickens/pigs mushrooms, what ever you decide, you must check your market, and can i get rid of what ive got,

just my thoughts, for what its worth,

jake

[ray23]

ray,im no

t having a go at you, but you seem to of chucked a load of fish in some water fed them for a while,

now you have 400 fish ready to go and nowere to take them,

didnt you think that once they were ready you could have to get rid of them, you say you have stoped feeding them now,

im no expert but i think they will start eating each other,

cat fish do this,

we read it on here many times, im going to start farming this or that,

no thought of were they are going to sell the end product,

before we started keeping pigs i read and read on here,, i went round talking to local farmers round me, to see, first if there was space for me to rear a few pigs, and not tred on to many toes,

then i was asking for numbers of people who come and buy,

you have to get lots of things in order first before you should even start to get your fish/chickens/pigs mushrooms, what ever you decide, you must check your market, and can i get rid of what ive got,

just my thoughts, for what its worth,

jake

No actually Jake we have done this before and sold out very quickly. at the moment no one seems to be stepping up. Our primary business is mushrooms and we do very well with that. We sold out on Pla Duk and Pla Nin last year.

From what we have done mushrooms, not sure it's worth the trouble to do fish. Don't know till you try. 400 isn't going to get a commercial proccessor excited.

Worth a go at me though.

[pigeonjake]

i agree with you mate, if you dont try youll never know if it works,

i did no you were into mushrooms,

thats something ill be looking at when i get back after this trip away, im going to convert a couple of the pig pens into mushroom houses, the wife has been asking round about bottles ect, we can get them for 7bht, so after reading what you and the others have put on here i didnt think was to bad,

the wife says she can sell them on a stall outside of her mums house that is on the road side, so we,ll be giving it a go,

nothing nuch to spend out on, only bottles and net, as like i say there going to go into one or two of the stys,

but ill keep all informed on here and hopefully take a few pics for shaggy,s thred on how we are going on,

jake

[ray23]

Jake we already have a thread going on mushrooms pretty complete, Might want to take a look at that.

It's on the second page of the farming link, for some reason I can't post the link. 7 is not a bad price.

The cat fish I have about 20 in a holding tank waiting to be bought. The others I have put on half rations and hopefully the light will supply enough bugs to keep them going..

The Pla Nin eat Algae and will eat grass, so not hard to supplement their diet. But it takes a lot longer to grow them. I would say with both kind of fish the feed is the real cost. Profit margins are really thin.

I think I have done just about all I can do, hopefully we will have a better year then we did last year.

If not I will just stay with the mushrooms.

[pigeonjake]

ive got blah nin in the pond behind the pig stys, the water goes green with the wash out water, andthe fish eat the alge as you say but i do feed them too, but to be honest i havnt sold any, they were just for us, beautiful on the barbi,

but i do put them i a barrol with no food to flush them, but mama dosnt,,lol

jake

[Canada]

Speaking of a light.... we put a light over our pond just to keep the damn termite flies out of the house. Bonus is that our pla duk love to eat them too! We are not farming fish. We are raising them as pets...haha Our pond is about 6 by 6 meters and we put a thousand little fishies in it for the kids to feed. We also put in 400 fish of other 4 other species but I suspect the pla duk have eaten them as I never see them. Don't know we will do when they get bigger....eat them I guess.