My 15 yr old son wants to start a small fish farm. He wants to raise wipers and blue cats to start. We have plenty of room to dig some small grow ponds and have the ability to run water and electricity to both. We also have a 90x120 pond about half a mile from our house for a small trophy fishing pond and our family has a NRD lake about 4 miles away that has an 80 acre permanent pool.

Is this worth doing?  Can he make any money growing fish?  Any tips?

There is.

I'm trying to remember his name

There was a thread in Homesteading a few years back that was really detailed and fascinating, but he did it in tanks.

@C-4

https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/2_1_2_year_old_Channel_catfish__updated_photos/5-1826735/&page=1&anc=bottom#bottom

That’s a great thread, but this is more commercial. Think FFA project and a couple thousand fish.

My brother-in-law did tilapia for a few years... Setup 3 cement ponds... Said it was a horrible pain in the ass and finally stopped... (he now does pecans) hah

You sound like a great dad! Good luck with your project

I’ll post a few useful links and then another post will be general thoughts.

Pond Boss Magazine

Pond Boss Forums

They are centered more so on creating an ecosystem of baitfish, panfish and then predatory fish, all living together with food supplementation, usually an automated feeding device for pellets.  I don’t know what you mean by an 80 acre pond in the family, but if it actually belongs to you then that would be like hitting the lottery for a natural fish farming pond.  You would start from baitfish up, but would have a natural ecosystem that would recycle fish waste (ammonia).

The best single book I’ve found on catfish is the one below.  It is full of excellent information.  The paperback version is $100 and well worth it.  It focuses on Channel catfish, not Blue catfish, but they are very closely related, to the point that there is a Male Blue catfish/Female Channel catfish hybrid that makes up about 15% of the catfish farming in the U.S.  The Blue-Channel hybrid grows 20%+ faster and is more disease resistant than the Channel catfish.  It can only be produced using artificial techniques.

https://www.amazon.com/Channel-Catfish-Farming-Handbook-Tucker/dp/1475713789/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

I raised catfish back in Louisiana, before i got into the oilfield.We had 200 acres of water. Its a lot of work, and in the summmr its 24/7 monitoring oxygen levels.

Perch bring really good money in MN and WI.  Not sure if that's a viable option in your area?

There are a series of good papers also covering the topic.  I’ll try to find a link.

Typically, you would dig a pond, maybe 1 acre in size and about 7 feet deep.  They used to keep them even more shallow, maybe 4 feet, but they would fill in over a few years and have to be dug out again, so now they dig them deeper.

You stock fish the same size, feed them, and harvest them in 18 months.  I can’t remember where you live, but growth is almost exclusively driven by water temperature.  The temperature for peak growth rate for Channel catfish is 86F.  Feeding is a % of body weight dependent on the 1) water temperature and the 2) size of the fish size.

The denser you stock the pond, the more ammonia builds (by-product of protein metabolism), the more algae you get, the lower the oxygen levels at night, the more stressed the fish, the more infections wipe them out!  Fish that are happy will have a strong immune system, and can resist infection well.

The key is to keep oxygen levels high, so if you have electricity you can get an aerator to keep oxygen levels high.  Though catfish have a reputation for tolerating low oxygen levels, the fish that will survive the best are carp/goldfish.  You can’t kill those things!

As you already noted, I DO NOT raise fish in ponds (still have my real estate agent looking for the promised land), but I have read a lot about them since I would like to raise the fish that way at some point (soon I hope!)

The biggest hurdle is getting fish to stock.  If you can buy and stock 2,000 fish the same size, you’re pretty much all set!  You have more more problems to sort out but you’ve cleared the biggest hurdle.

My problem is getting fingerlings to stock because the Channel catfish is not native to most of this state (only the Brown Bullhead catfish), and I have no way of getting inexpensive fingerlings.  This is why I am trying to breed them.  If you have questions, let me know as I may have some ideas.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/pSohn6lb9xE[/youtube]

Sounds like this is your guy, OP.

You want warm water but good oxygenation, but they fight each other.

Damn.  I swear there's a subject matter expert in every conceivable field on this forum.

20-30 years ago there was a rural program in OK to help landowners begin Catfish farming. it did well until VN flooded the world with cheap catfish and i think the entire program imploded.

Oxygen and finding stockers were the critical issues.

Your local heron and osprey populations will be most grateful, as will the occasional Bald Eagle.

How far is the nearest processor?  If you really want to lose your ass, get into the processing business.  

Check with the universities in your state.  One of them should have an aquaponics program and will have material/resources to help get going.

I used to plot with a drinking buddy to raise yellow perch, make a deal to use farm ponds, feed them road kill

He wants to raise these, both to stock our ponds and to sell to others with private ponds.  We are in Southern Nebraska.  Our summers get hot, but they don't last forever.  I know a few people that are growing wipers, but I don't know anyone growing blue cats.  We plan on starting them in cages in lined ponds.

Thanks for the good info.  I have no desire to breed them myself.  This needs to be something a teenager can handle for the most part.

I forgot about cormorants and mergansers, as I was thinking of birds that snatch fish from the water rather than diving birds.

@stutzcattle

You’re welcome.  Like I posted, if he has a source of wiper or Blue or Channel catfish fingerlings, this will be relatively easy.  From my reading of wipers, they love to school and surface feed, so they readily take pellets.