How I Started Raising Tilapia and Catfish - Small Scale Aquaculture 

"If you're never going to make mistake, you'll never get started". Best life tip ever. Great vid, thank you

I bought 30 baby tilapia and raised them for 4 years in a 6x8 greenhouse with two 100 gallon Rubbermaid troughs. Just put the pump in bottom of tanks ran the water through a 5 gallon bucket swirl filter then through a 10 gallon tray with lava rock where I grew tomatoes and veggies. Had as many as 25 in each tank. They did great through all seasons and got huge. Planned to eat them but the little kids loved to come feed them and thought they were pets so we released them In bigger pond. They’re basically backyard water chickens.

If you're going to raise that many fish, I'd suggest you get another 150 gallon rubber maid stock tank and using it just for filtration; have it out in the sun so you can add aquatic plants like water hyacinth or water lettuce to help with filtration. Fill the bottom with rocks, start out with a larger ones on the bottom and smaller ones on top; pump the water in through the bottom, so it will filter through the rocks and then the floating aquatic plants will do the rest and drain it from the top back to the main pond.

I've been searching for this video for years now lol. I finally found a "backyard engineer" that explains things so that I can understand 🤣

So relieving to get a video that is straight forward and natural. Thanks man

One of the better videos explaining and showing how you made the system work. Thank you so much. I wanted to build a pond for my turtles and fish. This helps.

Hey! Thank you for this short and informative walk-through. Been debating trying a small-scale fish production system for food and seeing all the "Find at the local dollar tree" filtration materials really got me thinking the major cost really will just be the holding tank. Thank you for getting the DIY juices flowing to get this started.

we had a fish pond awhile back, about the size of your pool. what we found that worked the best for filtering was pillows, yes pillows. believe it or not.we bought the cheapest we could find and used them. they worked really well, now we didn't have 100 fishes we had about 30. but it worked and we saved alot because all those cloths and things cost alot more than pillows. we used lava rocks, shade cloth for gardens and pillows. now what you could do is try about 3 or 4 pillows along with everything else. now if you buy the right kind of pillows you can clean them and use again

Nice presentation. A newbie offers great insight for a beginner. Here's what I did wrong and how you can make it better.

thank you for your video. Your advice, " Go make some mistakes, and learn what you need to learn cause you don't know what you don't know until you get started".

It’s quite easy to add a drain system on the bottom that comes out into the bottom of a large barrel and gets pumped through layers of gravel and sand,returning by a waterfall into the pond. I did this for a very large koi pond and the only thing I ended up adding was a small UV filter during summer to cut the algae down and make the water crystal clear. Also,loose bags of barley straw really help a lot with floating algae, as do bits of copper added to the filter.

Thanks for putting this together! Great info 👍

You should plumb a couple of those resin or plastic rectangular planters and grow tomatoes with that water. It'll help with the filtration considerably and you get tomatoes or whatever veg you'd prefer.

You’re the man. Thank you for this video! Hope everything is going well with your fishies!!

Thank you sir for sharing your your ideas, also starting my own backyard concrete pond.

Glad u took the plunge and started. Nice vid too, simple and informative

Super helpful for those of us just starting out with tilapia and aquaculture. I put about 70 tilapia in my pond and very quickly ended up with half that. I’m fighting low oxygen and temperature in my outdoor pond in the Andes mountains. Your videos are super helpful even though the solutions and problems are a bit different here. Thank you.

Hi, nice job. What might help you with the filtration is a diy separator prior to your biological filter. You can use any cylindrical basin barrel you want to. Immediately upon leaving your fish tanks. Direct and swirl the water and effluent from your fish tanks into the barrel by directing it to do so thru angling the intake flow. Construct it so the water swirls around the basin and that flow spirals down to an opening in a large stand pipe centered in the barrel. The water enters several inches from the bottom of this large stand pipe. ( you need several inches at the bottom to act as a settling area, having slower moving water there. Above that the water swirls. A swirl increases velocity in the water and helps to drop the suspende solids. But, too much velocity can also keep those solids in suspension. So some sort of baffle can be lowered to the bottom to promote turbulence and slow the flow helping to drop even more soilds out of the flow). The large dia pipe needs to be capped on top. Centered in that stand pipe you will need another smaller dia stand pipe which is open at the top and flows out thru the bottom of the basin then into your biological filter. What happens here is the heavier sediment falls out of the flow as it winds around the basin dropping to the bottom. Now low effluent water travels up the large dia pipe and around the smaller one until it reaches the opening of the smaller stand pipe and it falls down this tube on its way to thru plumbing to the bio filter. This reduces suspended solids in the water and lessens the load on the bio filter. Technically you would need to do a couple more things to improve water quality when increasing your stocking densities. Hope this helps. You can also lift your water using a 1400 - 1700 lpm air bubbler in comb with diy airlift pump. This would reduce operating cost, aspirate the water, and move your water. Finally, one often overlooked necessity in bio-filters is the application of air. Feeding air into the filter helps contribute to the healthy growth of aerobic bacteria. Good luck.

I really like your resourcefulness, I think I could figure it out after seeing your set up.

This is great, I want to do this so bad. Glad I found you.

Good video, you show the goods, get to the point, and have practical solutions that any guy can understand and relate to.

Awesome set up, great job Sir.

very cool set up! keep us posted for updates

"if your not willing to make mistake then probably youll never get started". Thank you

Hats off to you. Thanks for sharing

Damn fine job. Thank you for sharing your hard work.

Have you thought about trying to add a little bit of sand and a dozen freshwater clams.? From what I understand they do a good job filtering water

Great job on thee video. Very helpful.

thanks for this great video. It really helped me out.

Great information. Super little system

Great info man! Thanks!

One suggestion. Put some hyacinth plants on your large container. They grow and use up all the fish waste. As the plants get bigger just throw some out and let new ones grow which in turn will use up more fish waste

Before anyone jumps into farming fish, go purchase you a 70 gallon aquarium and throw in some fish. Learn aquariums and you be able to do this no problem. The more water volume, the easier it gets (with the proper setup)

So these are some healthy eating fish. Oh my word. I need to try this. Thanks for posting .. 🎉

I had a similar setup in my garage for a few years….. I would get a couple of the large food grade barrels and make one big filter and have all your tanks connected that way….. then all your water is more stable and easier to do maintenance as you grow.😎 I got up to a couple thousand gallons of fish at one point. I used a sump pump and gravity feed for everything except for the sump which was in the 55 gallon barrels… one full of mesh bags full of several filter materials like you are doing and then the other barrel was basically just for the sump and I had massive air bubbling going on above the sumps level so my water stayed really healthy without too much work…. I had tilapia, local caught small channel cats, bass, bluegill and sunfish…. Oh and the fish that I started with were cichlids of all different varieties. Once people find out you are into aquatic stuff, everyone and their neighbor has fish tanks to give you😂

This is beautiful. I would really love to start biofloc fish farming. I guess I will keep it locked here

Great video bud. 😎thanks

Nice set up.

👍 love the setup you have with the stock tank & how you have the pool pond what is the stuff on the outside of the pool pond? I didn't catch what it was sorry. I agree & love your last part you said about getting started your so RIGHT, if people want to get into raising fish or something, it's a learn as you go thing by doing research on the subject at hand. like watching videos & going on fish club sites that have good conversation on raising fish or growing a garden. It pays off in the long run if you keep at it, once you learn the good & bad & do's & don't & how to improve it there's no telling where it will lead you in life when you least expect it, keep up the hobby or work & lets see what you do from here.

Great video and wonderful information

Suggestion for your filter systems, try using the green Scott's scrubber pads and sand/fine gravel, also a layer of crushed up charcoal between the layers of sand and gravel I have found really improves water clarity

Calculate the volume of the container when empty. Drain some water off. Measure the volume of water that comes off. Measure the decrease in water level with the fish in it. Compare that to a decrease in water level if the tank was empty. A little bit of algebra you should be able to calculate the volume of that take that isn’t water (ie fish). Then you will at least now what percentage of your tank is fish and what percentage is water. If your fish are relatively the same size, Then use an average fish to measure the volume displacement of one average fish. And you are one long division problem away from knowing how many fish you have.

You should look into aquaponics! You get veggies and don't need to do water changes. Also, you can use net cages for the fish to make them easier to catch. Look up cage culture.

Nice video I'm planning to start my fish business soon.

Thank you for sharing.

Great video buddy 👍🐟⛩

Thank you so much for the video! Seriously considering doing this!

To protect your pump from accidentally draining your pond, you should add a sump pump switch to turn off the pump at a designated water height.

Amazing stuff, thank you 😊 I love how clear and simple you make it. I’m wondering, if I got the smaller pool-when would I break even on startup and maintenance costs? How expensive is it per month, if you had to ballpark it? And how many fish can you harvest per month for some good eatin? Lots of questions I know!! 😂

Great job. Very nice ingenuity. Not sure where you are in your journey, but I think your current trash can filter IS large enough. Being able to switch over to more natural filter options and less man made media, your system will perform significantly better. I think it’s perfect, just perfect your media and find a good long term tank option. Thumbs up.

the kind of pillow you want is the cotton or fiber pillows.

Thanks for the video. I'm designing a permaponics system and I think that Tractor supply tank is the missing link. Much appreciated.

Some will use swimming pools. some with concert ponds ect ect making the falling water will make air bubbles give the fish oxygen

The point of the dish scrubbies and lava rock isn’t so much to filter out debris but to grow beneficial bacteria. Ideally you want the filer floss and above the media (aka pot scrubbers and lava rock) to catch and filter the water before it gets to the biological media.

To get the fish out of your big tank use a barbless hook on a fishing rod

Had a small sunfish from the pond in a 55 gallon tank.. 2 years later he was a giant dude .. I couldn’t eat him as he was smart and interacted with me .. yesterday sadly brought him back to the pond .. Guess i’ll just stick to Guppies .. lol

You should always arrange your filtration so that the part which gets dirty soonest is the easiest to hand for changing out or cleaning so your system is better maintained by you. Having the floss buried under other stuff that isn't getting dirty means you may as well not have that floss for all the filtering it's doing after one day.

Put some raised bed aquaponic gardens on the outside of your porch. If the salad ingredients you grew ate the nutrients, the algae couldn't and your filters can cope with the reduced algae growth better. I like your setup.

my first pond was part of an addition of a aquaponics system for my poutdoor garden. Biggest issue i had was my kids trying to catch my fish and racoons being racoons.

🤔 it would probably be better if you replace that laundry basket with a couple 36” mesh laundry bags and fill those laundry bags with the pot s rubbers. Then fill two more laundry bags with the floss. Put in a couple more bags of the lave then this should be enough for 75-80 fish. Maybe get some closed cell foam and put some lettuce 🥬 , Golden Pathos maybe some other leafy green and they will strip the nitrogen from the water column and provide you with a weekly salad or two. Cool system. Good luck with it.

Been thinking about a talapia pond , catfish is good as well but they can get 30 to 130 LBS , that is rerally big . It might take a lake for them. I am in the fiippines and talapia is the norm . Running water and filtration is important

very good, thank you sir

Beautiful ❤️

Thank you 🙏👍🏻

Tilapia is my favorite fish. My grandma lived in a village by the lake and she used to make Tilapia with curry all the time. But I live in a condo in the city so I can't farm 😔

Watching from Anjo Trinity Fish Farm Papua New Guinea

I have a above ground pool that I ro convert to raising fishes, I'm worried about weather tge fishes would jump out of the water. Are these any specific breeds that don't jump out of water?

Need to do aquaponics with that setup.

This video gives apartment poeple hope.

Thank you so much for the video!!! Instead of tilapia, can you raise rainbow trout? Also, I saw a series of tanks once where they were all linked by pvc pike and water flowed around through all of them. Water circulation.

I think I might do something like this with an above ground pool next summer using some vegetables and maybe use catfish since I don’t really like tilapia. I’d also like to try freshwater shrimp or crawfish in a separate tank if I’m able to source them near my farm. Are there any good eating freshwater mollusks that can be easily farmed?

So say someone wants to amke a stream thru their property. How deep do you need to make it to raise fish?

I'm really curious about this! What do you feed your food fish? I have 2 aquariums at the moment with African cichlids, but any pellets or flakes I have seen say ( not for fish intended for human consumption) on the label..

I live in a place where the tank would freeze in the winter. How would you deal with that?

for filtration i suggest you grow food.. the soil n roots thrive off the waste they make. check numerous youtube videos for realization.

Hi graet job! Question : how big is the pomp for the 1000 glon? How many times the woter Needs to go true the filter in 24 hours ?

how would you go about starting with the cycling to avoid casualties? I mean, at some point the water/environment is just not going to be cycled

What are the 2 green ‘islands’ for in your large pond?

Thank you

Hello thanks for sharing this video. Could you let us know where did you buy Thilaphia fish seed ?

How many catfish would you keep in the small one max? I’m thinking a set up with multiple little ones like that but i have the big metal ones like for gardening

Thank you.

Hello! thank you so much for the insight. I am very new at this and have very limited to no knowledge about catfish farming, but I am extremely interested in starting my own small-scale farm. is there a stepwise video you made, or a book I can read to educate myself some more so I can start my journey? thank you

I feel like the trash can filter would work better if the pipes near the bottom were up higher and the water was introduced to the system at a lower level. Seems like that would give the waste time to settle out before the water is returned to the pond. I imagine the waste water coming in near the bottom through a filter with the return pipes at the top, basically opposite of what you have. I've never raised fish, though, so i could be wrong.

Very beautiful

You need at least three times more filteration media! I would think a 100 gallion container strictly for filteration. I helped a man set up a aguaponics growing tilapia. We used three IBC containers. We copied from the elderly gentleman from Australia.

What are you using as a water pump to get water to your trash can/canister filter? I'm always curious about that, and no one addresses it. I have air pumps for aquariums and ponds, and know nothing about water pumps or how to even locate them.

What is that you have wrapped around the pool ? Is that insulation ?

Would it be easier in less machines if it was a dug out pond?

Hay man! Do it with angelfish! Thanks. Tilapias multiply like rabbits anyway!

How often do you clean the tank?

Where did you get your starter fish?

Hello, great video. This is just a suggestion, as what you are doing works for you. You should get rid of the floss and replace it with a fine sponge. Using polyfil as your only mechanical media is very ineffective due to it clogging up so soon and then having the unfiltered water bypass straight into your biologicals, now acting as your mechanicals. In short order, your biological media will get clogged preventing the flow of oxygenated water your bio colony needs for survival. Your water entering should first pass through your mechanical media stage consisting, of a course, medium, and fine sponges then your biological stage of pot scrubbers, and finally your lava rock. You want your water free from muck and detritus and as clean as possible before it comes into contact with your biological media. You can still use your floss if you'd like, just use it in place of the fine sponge. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to rinse your sponges each time and they will last a very long time before they start to deteriorate. Good luck in your endeavors.

Is the waste water good for plants?

How many Tilapia do you have total?? How often can you harvest the fish?? Do you sell any of them to restaurants or markets?? Thanks so much for sharing..... Best wishes, Ax

Mesh bag on pump ! Thank you

I just watched your video, and I'm wondering if I could setup something like that in Canada where it is cold, what temperature does the water need to be for fish

What is that around the pool? Is that bamboo?

ty

A really great video I liked how you presented the information, but I have a few questions. After buying all of this material are you ever going to release the fish back into the wild? Or are they just there to sit and breed? Also if the fish are going to get bigger what do you suggest doing to prevent some if any pollution from entering the tank? I really enjoyed the video I learned a lot and now i can write my speech on this matter!