For a few years I dabbled in the aquaculture realm. My end goal? To successfully breed a threatened or endangered species and reduce the demand from the aquarium trade on the wild populations. Here’s how it all started:
So in the end, I accomplished what I set out to do and now I have shared exactly how we cultured our live food in an online course which you can pick up on my website. I’ll leave a link in this video’s description. If you are looking into aquaculture of any kind, this course will save you a lot of time, money and significantly reduce the number of fatalities as you learn how to raise fry or baby fish.
If anyone who is watching this is thinking about getting into aquaculture, here is what I learned:
- Start at home and bring in consistent money from your efforts before you expand. This is a bit tricky since you need to be licensed in order to sell to the stores. So do some research before you start as the laws in each state are different and you need to know how to properly dispose of biological matter that results from aquaculture as doing this incorrectly can cause a major local environmental issue.
- Specialize in one species and then expand from there
- Do a TON of research before you even start. Read every book you can get your hands on and formulate a plan. A Lot of the information out there is old but it still works. So it’s important to learn from the past and present practices.
- Price everything out and then double it. That’s how much money you will most likely really need.
- Know that this is not a quick process. It takes months and months to get everything just right. Make sure that you have enough finances to support this without any profit for at least a year or 2.
If you want to learn how to grow your own live food for either your reef tank or your own breeding projects, enroll in my online course here: https://aquapparel.teachable.com/p/live-food