THE FIRST FISH ARE HERE

The first shipment of fish were delivered from Bangkok. They are generally delivered in pick up trucks full of water with aerators hooked up to the main battery.

It didn't take the trucks long to get stuck on the muddy road. It has been raining for 2 weeks and we haven't finished the road yet. This meant a short carry for the fish but everything worked out well and no fatalities.

There were 3 trucks 2 with Arapaimas and 1 with Chao Phraya catfish and some Niger cats. The first out were the Arapaimas. These fish were only a little more than a year old so are around 25kilos. They are still quite dangerous to handle and need quite a few hands on them to get them out of the truck.

The fish are wrapped in a large carrying cloth to try to keep them calm .

Once the fish were taken out of the cloth they were all action ...Even this experienced handler was having trouble with this flyer.

We managed to calm a few fish down and get some pics. We will have our Arapaima nets ready for next weeks shipment of much bigger fish..

They were quite camera shy and didn't stick around for long

Different fish .

Same result ... I hope they get used to the camera as they get older ...

Next up was one of the Niger/Ripsaw catfish. They have sharp blades down both sides of their bodies so a towel needs to be wrapped around the tail to get a good safe hold of them.

I love the Ripsaws as they look so cool in photos. Kind of prehistoric I think ..

We also received 5 Small Chao Phrayas.

They are like a fresh water shark and eat just about anything . I think this one might have been going for my arm lol...

I was lucky to locate a large shipment of Piraiba catfish. I cant wait to start feeding these fish and see how fast they grow. They grow relatively slowly up to this size but should pack the weight on from here on in..

They will probably be around 10kg when we open and 25kg a year later . They can grow to more than 100kg so we are very excited to have them here and have more on the way..

As we still don't have electricity we had to hook up a diesel pump to circulate the water . We may have gone a little overboard with the PVC piping but at least we are ready for the Songkran festival next year :) OR if there is a fire in the local village we can crank up the pump and easily put it out.

Wrestling fish in their surroundings is tiring work .Boom managed to snap this pick. She said we should call it BIG beached Mekong . I am glad she is not writing the blog with the number of blooper type moments we had with this first fish delivery... It was a great feeling to see the Arapaimas swimming in one of the stock ponds at the end of the day .. I cant wait to get the lake finished and see them in there .