Chikolongo Fish Farm: Week 5 - Commercial Fish Farming

This last week I have taken some time away from Chikolongo, and worked on a commercial operation down in the escarpment. The farm is predominantly sugar cane, but they have decided to venture in to fish farming. In their current state, the ponds have been constructed and filled, but not yet stocked.

With bridges already built with Maldeco Fisheries, we decided to purchase 18000 fingerlings, requesting 5g as they have the best chance of survival in transit compared to 20g. Transporting the fingerlings is a logistical nightmare, the farm is over 7 hours drive by car and even more by truck, with the sun and heat they would have to move throughout the night. Driving at night in Malawi can be dangerous as cars have no headlights and many people drive drunk. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow for the sake of your fish farm.

I decided to head up to Maldeco the day before to watch over the move. On arrival I noticed the fingerlings being purchased were different sizes, something that will need to be taken into consideration down the line.

It is often the case that every aspect of the move is not thoroughly planned, but after explaining the correct stocking densities required in the bags, making sure they were double bagged, filled with oxygen and water in 3:1 ratio and zip tied to secure, we were ready to go. This highlights the importance of having someone there to oversee the operation.

Arriving at the farm in the morning, the truck had shown up and the bags had been put in to the ponds, unopened. It was improtant to move fast, once the fish had acclimatised, as the sun would get hot, and our fish could suffer high mortalities.

It took the good part of a morning, but we stocked all the remaining fingerlings. Unfortunately I was not able to oversee the entire operation and mortalities caused during transport were high, an issue with using a company located many miles from the farm.

Neverthless it was some more solid experience and a lesson learned.