One of the seperated female broad stock
Good day 
Today, I want to share some of the lessons we’ve learned from our first catfish hatching process of the year.
This comes after taking a break for a couple of years to get things right, which I explained in one of my previous posts here
@wewarriors-28/the-long-break-is-over
In the first week of this hatching process, our success rate was about 80%. However, after four weeks, we sadly lost a whole tank of fish fries. By the end of the second week, we had already given up on that tank and stopped feeding them. Stay with me, I’ll explain why.
Recall that in my earlier post where I shared the step-by-step process of hatching catfish fries, I mentioned that we collected eggs from three different female broodstocks.
@wewarriors-28/the-birth-of-our-fish
I also explained how the quality of the eggs can be identified by their color, the brown eggs are the best quality, followed by the thick green ones, and finally the light green ones, which are usually premature.
In that particular production, we mixed eggs from the three female broodstocks, both mature and premature. Unfortunately, that mistake affected one of the tanks.
After mixing the eggs with the male’s milt (sperm), fertilization occurred in the tanks about 20 hours after spawning. The fertilized eggs were spread on the spawning net, from where they dropped into the water once fertilization was set.
Coincidentally, the first tank had a majority of the premature eggs, while the second tank had more of the good ones and that second tank is doing very well.
However, the fries in the first tank were over 80% premature, and by the second week, most of them had died. The few remaining ones could not be transferred to the thriving tank, as that would risk infection or contamination. We had no choice but to leave them, and by now, the tank is almost empty.
A view of the affected tank
To correct this, we’ve boosted the feeding of our female broodstocks over the past three weeks to ensure their eggs mature properly before the next hatching. These broodstocks are ones we raised ourselves for over a year, and that gives us more confidence in their output compared to those we used to buy.
Another important lesson is to always have the generator on standby to pump water regularly, especially during long power outages like the one we’ve had since yesterday, for over 24 hours. A constant flow of fresh water is vital for the survival of the fries.
A view of the thriving tank
We also had a minor issue with our water plant, which developed some leakages. All efforts to patch it made things worse, so we had to install a new one entirely. I’ll share more about that in another post.
Overall, I see this first hatching process as a pilot project leading up to full-scale production soon. The lessons we’ve learned so far are very important, and they’ll definitely guide us toward better results in our next attempt.
Thank you for passing by, cheers.
