In and about our tropical fish farm and breeding facility

A hobby that became our business

Twice blessed is a man with a hobby, for he has two worlds in which to live.

Some of our 100 outdoor rearing ponds. Pond sizes vary from 25,000 gal. to 50,000 gal. capacity.	Goats, our grass cutters. They are especially handy for trim work around the pond edges. They also work real cheap.
Fish Pond Road. Each pond contains a different species or variety of tropical fish. The 'livebearers' such as swords, platys and guppies are allowed to have their young right in the ponds but egglayer varieties are hatched indoors and they young fry are then transferred to a pond.	Look closely to see some baby swordtails along the bank. Each livebearer pond is stocked with about 500 selected adults which will then produce thousands of young within a few weeks. We normally expect to harvest from 5-10,000 fish from each pool.
Mary and Robyn with Wes in the hatchery building. The small 2 gallon tanks on the top shelf at the right are some of the several hundred which are set up twice weekly with breeders for spawning in this section of the building.	Overview of the breeding room. Forty gallon aquariums are stacked two rows high and most will contain either breeders or young newly hatched fry. When fry are several weeks old they are sent to outdoor ponds for rapid growth before harvesting for sale to retailers.
Some of our over 4000 aquariums containing breeding stock or young fry. Each 40 gal. tank is aerated and filtered and has running water from one of our deep artesian wells flowing thru constantly.	Angel breeders. A good pair will produce from 3-500 eggs every 10-14 days. Eggs are deposited on a length of ceramic tile by the breeders and we then remove the tile and hatch the eggs in a 2 gallon tank. After hatching the fry are released into 40 gallon aquariums for rapid growth until saleable size.
Large Albino Tiger barbs being conditioned to spawn. The bottom row of tanks have plastic liners and contain very small fry. When ready to send outdoors some of the water is carefully removed and the entire bag is picked up and brought outdoors where the fry are then released into a large pond for growth.	One spawing of longfin Black Tetras. A good pair will spawn every 2 weeks and produce up to a thousand eggs. The eggs look like little bubbles on the bottom of this 2 gallon tank. We normally set up 50 or more tanks of a species at one time.

Daughter Diane in our hatchery building in the angel fish breeding section. We breed lots of angels, barbs, tetras, gouramis, etc., indoors and send them to the outdoor ponds for fast growth. Most livebearers are bred right in the ponds where the babies have lots of room to hide so as not to get eaten.

Julie is one of our employees in the packing department in the main building. We have about 4000 aquariums stocked with fish for packing and delivery to retailers in about a 300 mile area. To see more of the main packing operation click HERE

For your entertainment while browsing this page you are listening to a random selection of the midi files available for download. Most of these midi files have been generated using Band in a Box by PGMusic. Click your 'Refresh' button for a different selection as you browse.