FISH BY THE TRUCK LOAD

The Rainy season has arrived in full force making the temporary road we have built quite slick .Lots of mud and spinning tires. It seems like EFT motor cross some days.

Even with unfavorable conditions we have managed to receive deliveries of 18 truck loads of fish .The first stock ponds are seriously starting to fill up.

Other deliveries are also on schedule :). Baby Michelle is now due in just 5 weeks. ..

Here is one of many Arapaima of around 70kg.

We received our first shipment of Siamese carp. We will be growing most of our carp and Mekong catfish stock offsite due to their special requirements ,BUT we have some fish we are growing under our Arapaima. Most of the fish are currently between 10 and 15kg.

Boom seems to have a nack for taking good BLOOPER shots . Here I am again trying to hold onto a lively Carp

This odd looking fish is Flathead Goonch [bagarius Suchus]..It was just such a cool looking fish i couldnt resist adding it to our stock.Not sure how big it will get or if it will end up in one of our MFP Aquariums.

Here is another Goonch species which is a Salween Goonch found in the Salween river in Myanmar. It wont grow as big as its Indian cousin but can still reach easily over 1 meter.

It looks like he wanted to take a chunk out of my arm but I was more worried about him biting other things once he jumped free. lol..

Here is another nice colourful Arapaima .

That will teach us for trying to pick one up for a picture. We should never have tried as it can harm the fish ..Last time we do that that..

I have a pond in Phuket and have also been growing some fish there . Now the EFT ponds are ready we netted the home pond and moved all the fish to EFT .I was amazed how many fish i had accumulated in such a short time..

Here is a nice Thai Mahseer from the home pond.. We also had 25 smaller Arapaimas, Peacock Bass, Red and Golden Mahseer, Albino Pacu, Golden dorado, Piraiba catfish Tarpon and several Arawana..It was defintely time to move them :)..

After the home pond it was time to net 2 stock ponds I had been renting. The overall experience is not one which I would repeat. Many dead fish and fish unaccounted for. The owner of the ponds was gracious enough to replace the 200 missing Redtail Cats of which none had survived, but my over all losses were well over 500,000 baht /$15,000 not including paid rent ...

Some Arapaimas which were supposed to be special stock were apparently switched for diseased fish in transit by a contracted fish delivery source.The diseased fish then contaminated the pond shared by many other fish. After speaking to the delivery source who of course denies he delivered diseased fish I dont know who or what to believe any more. I paid in advance for the Arapaimas .So where are the fish I paid for if the delivery source didnt deliver them ???

Some nice wallagoo were a good result of the stocking and pond rental.

There were some nice Tiger Shovelnose Catfish which were a bright point in the pond rental experience.

I was lucky to locate 20 Pla bambusas as the Thais call them . They are a cool fish in my opinion and quite rare. They are already a nice size so lets see how big we can get them before we open. I see them in the stock ponds every day as they swim around the pond edge attacking any prey they see.

I have had problems handling a lot of the fish you see in the photos and the reason is obvious once you think about it . All these fish have traveled some distance in the back of a pick up truck and are not happy on arrival to say the least . The last thing they want is someone trying to pick them up for a photo. They are also well rested and fresh and not tired like they would be after you would have caught them and landed them .

This Jau/Zungaroo did a quick flip and was out of my hands before I knew it. I was stupidly holding one of his pecs between my fingers .Lesson learned as he punctured my hand and made a bloody mess to the shock of Boom , Me and Mr Pong the delivery guy . I thought I would be heading for stitches but after wrapping my hand, applying pressure,and a kind an offer from Mr Pong to burn the wound with a cigarette Thai style the bleeding miraculously stopped .:)..

Some friends had commented that there were only pictures of me on the blog holding fish. I asked my step son Kwang to help out. He was eager to get a picture with this nice Arapaima. I am sure he had lots to tell his friends after his school holidays and the picture was all over his facebook page.

I am sure this picture didn't show up on his facebook though:). I guess Boom doesn't just take BLOOPER shots of me :)

Here is one of our many stocked Redtail Catfish . We have over 200 redtails already from this size up to 15kg. All of these fish will be a lot bigger before we open as they just dont stop eating. This is such a great background for fishing photos. I am sure there will be many EFT fish pics like this .

Stay tuned as many more fish to come...

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 .

STOCK PONDS ALMOST READY

We chose to add EM [ Effective Microorganisms] to help with water quality. It took a lot of mixing and some patience for the mixture to cure but its now in the water and hopefully doing its job .

We also added elephant dung to the bed of the ponds to help initiate plankton growth. I actually checked the commodities market to see if Elephant dung was a new addition as trying to buy this "shit" was next to impossible. After 8 phone calls and 3 meetings.... I AM NOT KIDDING!!!!! We finally negotiated 300baht per pick up truck load and I had the pleasant job of starting every morning for a week loading my truck with Elephant crap:(...

The 3000sq meters of grass was not only for looks but also to stop the banks around the stock pond area from eroding during the coming rains.Luckily it has rained every day as that's a lot of new grass to water.

The ponds are almost full and we are now testing the water for PH levels ,Nitrates and Alkalinity. We unfortunately still don't have electricity to the resort due to some hold ups with the local electric authority which we hope will be resolved this week.

In the meantime we are working to run power to our ponds for the filters [ still building] and aerators..

LANDSCAPING STOCK POND AREA

We have landscaped the stock pond area . 3000 square meters of grass, 30 cocktail palms, 30 fan palms , a few flowering bushes and things are starting to take shape.

We hired 15 of the local villagers to help with the landscaping. Even with so many hands it was still a lot of work.

HOME SWEET HOME :)

We now have somewhere to live while working on the property . Our 12m x 3m prefab office/house was delivered this week along with a 40foot shipping container which has been modified to be our workshop as well as much needed storage space.

I was a little concerned about the road conditions for the trucks delivering the units . My worries were for naught as the truck completely missed the road and we had to dig it out with the excavator

The unit was built by SAFEWAY ASIA who manufacture and also rent prefab office units and containers in Thailand. I worked with Gord the owner on a simple design for a 2 bedroom unit and they had it finished in just 4 weeks.

Dont worry the unit isn' really going to land on Gord's head ..Rest assured those Thai lifting straps are to specification:).

It will be great to have running water , and as soon as we get electricity a hot shower . It will also be a lot easier to work as we will have a place out of the rain and blazing sun to review plans and solve problems as they arise. We have a temporary bamboo house for Boom's brother who is the lead Thai worker on our project. We also bought some bamboo salas which will be set up in different areas of the property and one will serve as shelter for our 24 hour security guard

4 PONDS FINISHED DIGGING

We now have 4 stock ponds finished and will be filling them in the coming week. We will then work on the water quality to make sure it is perfect before adding our current fish inventory. I am very excited to see how much all of our fish have grown and get some pics of the 50kg plus Arapaimas which Stuart Gillham has been growing for us. If the weather cooperates we will also finish the final 3 ponds in the next 2 weeks.