Fish for food?

[Silent Earth]

Please persevere with me on this.

Read a tatty free magazine that the wife brought home from the US this morning, wife had torn out a couple of pages she thought would interest me.

It was about TV documentary shows of the type seen on BBC2 BBC4, Ch 4, Discovery, Nat Geo and they were talking to assorted US / UK /AUSSIE film makers etc

The snippet the wife had picked up on was one of the crews had been involved with a program that I guess was either home improvement or garden landscaping ( yup boring I know but keep going)

I quote them

“ We are doing more and more pond installations for home steaders and preppers who want to grow Koi Carp both for ornamental use and as a food source”.

Something for us to revisit again? Keeping fast growing, easy to look after, cheap to feed fish as a back up food source? In the colder bits like the UK and Northern US areas Koi appear to be the default choice, in warmer climes like the southern US Tilapia appear to be suitable.

 

[alabaster]

I've seen commercials for "Pond Stars" that is all about a company installing ponds on people's properties. Whether or not that line is true though... I've no idea. I can't imagine why not, though. If you can eat koi and they grow as well as they do, well... Why not?

 

[Silent Earth]

Oh yes you can definitely eat Koi Carp, they are just Carp originally bred for food in China but also bred for their colour as ornamental fish, they grow fast up to one meter in length and are far more hardy that say trout. They tolerate a much greater range of water quality and will eat almost anything. Carp are still very commonly eaten in Europe, indeed in some place Carp is the main course of choice at Christmas instead of Turkey.

 

[Gazrok]

Interesting.

Our plans for the spring are to install our little pond and flesh out the whole herb/medicinal garden area. We already have the pond form, and some other equipment for it. Granted, it won't hold a ton of fish, but now I'm wondering if we should go with Tilapia over the planned Koi Carp. Really, the primary purpose for the pond was ornamental, but I love a good dual purpose when I can do so.

It's going to be a fun family project. I just want to wait until spring as more little doo-dads are available locally in the season for such things.

 

[Silent Earth]

If you have tropical or semi tropical water then Tilapia grow bloody huge and are a staple south American food.

 

[Brent S]

I'll look into whatever fish I can find locally between brim, coi and tilapia. My pond is only about 10x10 ft, and is about 6 ft deep. I'm not planning to raise a lot, but fried fish is a nice alternative for dinner occasionally. I'll start looking for someone to stock it this spring. I think the biggest factor on which type is what it takes to feed them. All three of these fish have pretty diverse appetites.

 

[DrHenley]

A lot of pond owners here keep grass carp to control the weeds. They are a bit more fun to catch than a koi carp, and I'd much rather eat a grass carp than a koi.