Frag Farm

[Katfsh]

The past week I have been kicking around the idea about starting a Frag Farm. My father and I own and operate a 1000 acre catfish farm and hatch around 80 Million catfish anually. So I am no stranger to aquaculture. I have had salt water tanks for the past seven years and got into reef tanks a little over a year ago. We are currently adding onto our hatching operation and have some extra tanks that will not be using and this got me to thinking. The largest tanks are 15' long x 3' Wide x 4' tall,
these tanks are concrete covered in fiberglass that is covered in gelcoat. I have several other tanks that vary in size from 250 - 500 gallons, that are fiberglass and poly.

I have several Question.

1) is this even a feasible idea of is it just a daydream. Could I make money raising frags and possibly fish.

2) Equipment and System design. We also own an aquaculture supply store so I can get some equipment cheap. I would have the big vat as the growout tank and then pump into another tank that would house the skimmer and live rock, then go into the very large fuge. I would have a manifold for the various reactors and probes. I would like to have this thing automated as possible. is there any computer software available to monitor everything?

3) Lighting? VHO or MH how much?

Please give me some advice.

Thanks.

 

[Sea Turtle]

I am not sure as to which level of MH you should have. I guess you couldn't go wrong with 4 or 5 MH 400watt set ups. The size of you system is amazing! I think that as long as you have a nice digital camera, some $$$ for start up equipment, the ability to set up a website (to sell the stuff) and a close UPS or shipping store, you sure could make some money.

 

[iseeweed]

Book of Coral Propagation by Anthony Calfo

 

[Ben1]

Most of what I have read on doing this leads me to believe just reaching break even is a feat most of the time. That said, you would need to figure out all of the cost from salt to electric. Include your time as the time you are spending farming could be spent working the catfish farm.

It all depends on your methods to, are you planning on developing many large mother colonys to farm from? if so you would need a large farm tank to raise these, and a frag station of sorts. I think the market is very challenging right now, you would need to have a good constant selection to sell to stay competitive in the market and this would probably require some serious time devoted to the coral farm.

I guess it all depends on what you want out of it, if you are just wanting to cover your expenses of having a reef tank and break even on the coral farm it might be more optimistic.

I would love to turn my basement into a coral farm but have the feeling I would just be one more basement farmer thats around for a few years and has to quit. Miguel from fragglereef.com wrote a book that has a lot of basics in it but gives a better feel for everything. Its a short fast read and might be worth checking out.

 

[Anonymous]

You'd get some brutally honest advice on the idea in the industry forum...

But as Ben says, perhaps now is not the ideal time to break into the industry.