my first posting

This is my first entry into there blog. Marble goby or ketutu in Malay or soon hock in cantonese is a very ugly looking freshwater fish with among the most delicate taste at par with the empurau or (wang pu liau - cantonese) from kalimantan and patin muncong from Pahang river in Peninsular Malaysia. Marble goby is also a very delicate fish to culture with its own characteristic and habits. The selling price commensurate with its delicate taste, rarity and difficulty in handling.

I have a small farm where together with my brother in law culture this fish in a monoculture environment. We started the farm at the end of 2004 as to research on how to culture the fish commercially. We built a concrete pond with total size of 20 feet by 100 feet divided into 10 smaller ponds. The pond is fully covered with zinc roof and we got our water from a small ground well nearby. Initially we put in 200 fry caught from a ex mining pond each between 30 an 100gm. We feed them white shrimp bought from local fisherman.

After a few months when all the pond is ready, we bought another 1000 fry from a trader in Ipoh. By the second day the fish arrived, they started to die at the rate of 50 a day. We tried many type of medicines but due to our ignorance and inexperience all of the fry died. All 1200 of them. In late 2004 we bought another batch of frys. Again most of them died and left us with about 250 pieces still surviving by the middle of 2005. By then we already gained enough experiences on how to keep them alive. We also learnt on how to feed them with cut frozen sardine and oily mackerel.

By early 2006 we brought another 800 frys and about 20% of the died because of poor handling by the seller. Thus by middle of 2006 we have about 850 fishes in our farm. The fish eat every 2 day and does not seem to want to increase in size. We then learnt about omega 3 in marine fish and omega 6 in freshwater fish. As we are getting frustrated about the growth rate of the fish, we found by accident on how to make them take their food readily daily. This is by observing the fishes we have that my freshwater shop in Petaling Jaya that we kept because they are to small to sell i.e. below 600 gm. By making the fish to run around by moving the water using a water pump, it will take fresh and cut food any time of the day. We then use this little finding in our farm in Sg. Petani and wallah it works. By the middle of 2007, all of the left over fish from the 2005 have reach marketable size. It weight ranges from 700gm to 1.2 kg and growing .

In the mean time in 2005 we built 26 concrete pond of the size 20 feet by 25 feet and 6 ponds 10 ft by 20 ft. Two of the have about 1000 puntius bulu or tengalan and puntius daruphani or krai. They are now between 500gm and 1.1 kg. Marketable size. Another two have 6,000 fry that we have kept for the last 6 month and will be separated into 10 ponds soon. another 2 ponds are full of fishes of different spices such as jelawat (sultan yee), mekong cat fish, carp rumput ( wan yee), tilapia , lampam etc.

Early this month we decided to concentrate only on marble goby and puntius bulu/daruphani. 2 weeks back we bought about 34 kg of marble goby fry of various size. After quarantine and initial died off, we have about 120 pieces in total or 28 kg.average size 200gm. All these fishes are from Sarawak fly in using the dry method. Yesterday we just took in 15 kg of fry that total about 200 pieces. These are mostly from Semenyih lake. We are now quarantine them are treated them with salt and potassium permanganate. We expect 20% to died due to poor handling.

End of entry for now