I was hoping that I might be able to pick your collective brains regarding an idea to grow on common and mirror carp on a very small scale, but commercial basis.
My background is that I love anything and everything aquatic. I have two aquariums (85 gallon and 170 gallon) with tropicals and a largish (3500 gallon) pond with mostly carp and a few koi. We're in Scotland, so a long way north for carp. I also go fishing a lot, for most local species.
We're intending to move to Germany in 2019 (thank you Brexit, though I am half German so it was always a possibility) and part of my plan to make a living is to grow on carp and import them into the UK for the purpose of stocking specimen carp angling lakes. Carp fishing is huge business in the UK, and large carp are very expensive but less so on the continent.
The climate is also massively more suitable for growing on carp than the UK, which has very cool and unreliable summers.
So the plan build what is in effect a large koi pond, but rather than using high tech filters, I'd like to use a reedbed/plant based filter.
The pond would be in the region of 50ft x 33ft x 7ft average depth (one end shallower and down to 10ft at the deep end). About 83,000 gallons in the main pond.
Bottom drain would feed a 12,000 gallon an hour pump which would feed a 50ft x 10ft reed bed (and other plants) filtration system. Deep gravel allowing long residence time for water within the filter system, with a water volume within the filter of about 12,000 gallons. So system volume 95,000 gallons. There would probably be a large UV clarifier before it reaches the reed bed.
So the question is, does that sound like a reasonable environment to grow on carp? Native mirrors and commons are considerably tougher than koi and also quite a bit larger (and hopefully grow quicker too).
The plan would be to introduce around 30 large carp (weighing on average 25lbs) and grow them on for one or two seasons. German summers are long and warm, and I'd expect the water temperature to be over 65 fahrenheit from May to October and over 75 degrees from late June to mid September.
With precise, but heavy feeding and what I regard as being a fairly low stocking density, what kind of growth rate would you expect on these fish (they will be quite a quick growing strain)?
The main issue that I foresee is that the carp will have come out of a natural lake environment where they will have been artificially fed, but a large proportion of their diet would also have been natural foods. They may spook in a koi pond and refuse to feed for a while.
I do intend to keep the water quality exceptional as I would intend to swim in the pool as well.
Any thoughts or ideas on the topic would be greatly appreciated. I've kept fish for some time, but this is a much larger project than I have yet attempted and I'm trying to establish whether it's viable or not.
I know that in a natural setting such fish (25lbs) can gain as much as 7lbs in a year. I'd like to think that this is possible (and not at the expense of the fish's health) in a tightly controlled environment like the one I'm proposing.
Thanks in advance.
My background is that I love anything and everything aquatic. I have two aquariums (85 gallon and 170 gallon) with tropicals and a largish (3500 gallon) pond with mostly carp and a few koi. We're in Scotland, so a long way north for carp. I also go fishing a lot, for most local species.
We're intending to move to Germany in 2019 (thank you Brexit, though I am half German so it was always a possibility) and part of my plan to make a living is to grow on carp and import them into the UK for the purpose of stocking specimen carp angling lakes. Carp fishing is huge business in the UK, and large carp are very expensive but less so on the continent.
The climate is also massively more suitable for growing on carp than the UK, which has very cool and unreliable summers.
So the plan build what is in effect a large koi pond, but rather than using high tech filters, I'd like to use a reedbed/plant based filter.
The pond would be in the region of 50ft x 33ft x 7ft average depth (one end shallower and down to 10ft at the deep end). About 83,000 gallons in the main pond.
Bottom drain would feed a 12,000 gallon an hour pump which would feed a 50ft x 10ft reed bed (and other plants) filtration system. Deep gravel allowing long residence time for water within the filter system, with a water volume within the filter of about 12,000 gallons. So system volume 95,000 gallons. There would probably be a large UV clarifier before it reaches the reed bed.
So the question is, does that sound like a reasonable environment to grow on carp? Native mirrors and commons are considerably tougher than koi and also quite a bit larger (and hopefully grow quicker too).
The plan would be to introduce around 30 large carp (weighing on average 25lbs) and grow them on for one or two seasons. German summers are long and warm, and I'd expect the water temperature to be over 65 fahrenheit from May to October and over 75 degrees from late June to mid September.
With precise, but heavy feeding and what I regard as being a fairly low stocking density, what kind of growth rate would you expect on these fish (they will be quite a quick growing strain)?
The main issue that I foresee is that the carp will have come out of a natural lake environment where they will have been artificially fed, but a large proportion of their diet would also have been natural foods. They may spook in a koi pond and refuse to feed for a while.
I do intend to keep the water quality exceptional as I would intend to swim in the pool as well.
Any thoughts or ideas on the topic would be greatly appreciated. I've kept fish for some time, but this is a much larger project than I have yet attempted and I'm trying to establish whether it's viable or not.
I know that in a natural setting such fish (25lbs) can gain as much as 7lbs in a year. I'd like to think that this is possible (and not at the expense of the fish's health) in a tightly controlled environment like the one I'm proposing.
Thanks in advance.