Can you please give me your address here in davao city for us to able to visit you.
we are interested on this.

Thank you very much.

Cris Joseph

Can you please give us an idea of where to buy fingerlings here in davao city including there contact details.

Thank you,

Joseph,

I have already answered some of your inquiries in my comment above.

Reur last question, Pangasius are bottom feeders as well. Thus they can eat the feeds that settle at the bottom. Pangasius can be stocked at unimaginable densities which your carps may not tolerate, unless you are stocking Pangasius at 1/m2 which is impractical and a waste of time, space and effort.

Feeding management will be important in minimizing feed wastes.

First, you should have a good idea of your population and the size of your fish. From here you can compute for their ration for the day. Further, Pangasius are active feeders. You feed them gradually until they are eating. Once they are full, they go away. Hence, you can stop feeding them.

One good thing about Pangasius is that they can utilize atmospheric oxygen because of their accessory breathing apparatus. For this reason, Pangasius can tolerate some pollution in the water.

Anyway, Mr. Baldia’s posts are very informative. It is good that guys like him would share their views for the newbies to ponder upon.

Not until you tried it then you will know.

Anyway, I’m just sharing my thoughts on these stuffs. Dont have the intention to promote something or meant to offend anybody.

The chicken entrails mentioned here are the large intestines which are not made into isaw. Only the small intestine are used for isaw. These are the same ingredients used by feed companies for their meat and bone meal source.

Based on my farm economics, using home made feeds will save the fishfarmer 50-70% of the feed cost, labor and power included. It will also take only one hour to extrude 100 kg of feed in a commercial meat grinder.

Mummified hog fetus is a result of some nutrient deficiency and not necessary from disease. Of course, they can be boiled before incorporating into feeds.

The same growth rate and FCR can be achieved if the farmer will take into account the nutrient profile of his home made feed.

The fact is, even if one formulates his own feed using traditional ingredients like soya, rice bran, fish meal etc., and have it toll processed into floating pellets, a 30-40% savings on feed cost can be realized because you save on the marketing cost, salaries, and other operating costs of the feed miller.

Most feed companies have field technicians who are extending technical advises to their customers for free. You may approach them. Tilapia and Pangasius pond culture are relatively easy species to culture.

Almost every week I traverse those rivers teeming with fish cages and floating houses with cages under it but I seldom see people feeding their Pangasius with self formulated feeds. Although, the domestic left over foods on those floating houses are poured down into the fish in cages under those houses.

The Seafood Processors and Exporters of Vietnam are encouraging fish farmers to use commercial feeds as per demand by their European and Russian customers. The meat quality is better with fish feed with commercial feed. Also, they are into GAP – Good Aquaculture Practices that formulated feed without quality standards are discourage.

The “self” formulated feed being wet easily sinks down to the pond bottom and when fish try to eat them the mud at the pond bottom goes with it making the fish smell muddy. And feeding that in cages is not efficient because they easily break loose in the water and a lot goes out of the net. If you can see the movement of the fish during feeding frenzy you will observe that a lot of feed are being wasted if they are not floater feed.

In Vietnam people would rather eat the chicken entrails and kuhol than feed them to the fish.

In the Philippines I don’t think that formulated feed would be significantly cheaper compared to commercial feed. Just think how much today is the price of rice bran per kilo? In some places they are even hard to find. Likewise, what about the price of soya meal, fish meal, and copra meal? Kuhol is also hard to find in some areas. And chicken entrails would find them priced better in the streets as “isaw”.

And doing it manually with the meat grinder how much time you need to grind 100 kilos? Will you let somebody grind it for free? Use a mechanical grinder or one that is run by electricity? How much that will cost you? Knowing the cost of these materials and the effort of making it, one can come up with the price and compared it to the commercial feed. But also think about the culture period and the FCR.

And I don’t think the fish would be attractive to the Filipino consumers if they know that you are feeding it with dead chicken and still-born pigs. What about bio-security?

In Saudi we have tried to make soya and chicken manure as feed but they were steam cooked and pelletized. It can partly substitute the commercial formulated feed for some weeks of feeding even for shrimps.

Just sharing some thoughts.

How many fish are you culturing? and on what acerage?

Can you send some photographs of your farm and pangas culrure?

regards,

Nadeem Alam
dfsfarms@yahoo.com

Dear Mr. Baldia,

I have seen your reply to Jen Fernandez on 9th july and am please to note that poultry wastes if grounded and mixed with rice bran (balled) and fed to the fish should be enough feed for Pangas to grow well!
Will the above feed combination allow the fish to grow to say 1 or 1.5 kg in 6-8 months? 2 Kg in 12 months?

Even though the above combination would be cheep enough but would not be floating and would sink right away and might cause massive water pollution, will it be worth while to culture some bottom feeders such as e.g. common carp which could consume most of the unconsumed feed at the ponds bottom?

Regards,

Nadeem Alam
dfsfarms@yahoo.com