Seed fish from Matsya kerala.

31/07/2009
I had received calls from Fisheries Dept regarding the delivery of seed fish.Visited Fisheries dept and discussed with Mohandas and Prashanth about the delivery and i was suggested to be @ patani fisheries by 9:30 am following day.

01/08/2009
Reached patani fisheries to finally reach rosen fisheries where the seed fishes were in captivity.seed fishes were in plenty which were captivated by inverted mosquito nets which were placed inside the partioned tanks, something special about it is there was continuous supply of water and continuous drain of water.Inside these captive mechanisms were shoals of fishes and this time they were larger in size more than 2cms some even 5cms !!!.During school days i have learned about flying fish which gets above the surface and goes back diving into the water something similar these fishes out there ie catla,rohu,and mrigal all of these were jumping above the surface each of these captive nets were filled with seed fish which moved around it in a shoal.

Counting seeds
Keeper at the nursery suggested that a steel tumbler would carry 550 seed fishes but it would be counted as 500, but i doubted the measurement and expressed doubt when the keeper suggested to count them and i agreed and then the counting began.

Keeper scouped out a cup of fishes as your would scoup out rice from an urn. Then kept it in a small portion of net separated from the rest and started to pick around 5 seed fishes at a time with a tea strainer.The count went on and it was tough to keep pace with the keeper as he was accustomed to counting seed i tried to keep up though there were small differences in count while counting either i was wrong or he was wrong but than differnce was marginal.But when the scoup was counted it finished at 366. Which was far to low from the actual number of 550 marginalised to 500 to the buyers benefit.Then he offered to make by another steel tea strainer which gave a count of 149.Thus on a mutual agreement it was a scoup of steel tumbler + a scoup of steel tea strainer. We moved from Mrigal to catla which was measured with a slightly smaller steel tumbler and again the count was 350 + and around 150 again.
That was an expose.But he readily agreed.

Without much loss of time he offered to supply,when he asked if that had to be counted again (sarcasm) i pretended as though i did not know and said that it is not required and then he did the scoups into a plastic mug and then they were dumped into plastic bags filled with water, and oxygen was filled and they were sealed with a rubberband.Four bags were kept aside which was supposed to contain 2000 seeds during this panic to get the numbers, a mishap occured and thus it was mrigal and catla, instead of catla and rohu.

Waived to the people around and left the scene to reach the nursery and count to find that the first pact was around 350+ and second around 411 and third and foruth packet with 321 seeds were around 1400 of which in less than 4 hours casuality hit around 94
there could be some more but to save them they were sent into a nursery a tank which was capable of holding around 3500 lts of water.Around 24 of these dead fishes were dropped into the barrel containing shrimp seeds.Shrimps stung around each fish almost every fish was lifted pulled or dragged by these microbe looking shrimps.It appeared dead fish were the feed for shrimp seeds and not starter feed as that was less consumed.

2nd august
Again there were dead fish floating in the tank they were strained out with a net and toll tocuhed 86.and some of these were showing some kind of fungal infection a discolouration on its body.water was pumped out and fresh water added.

Rate of depletion is alarming and thus a visit to Malampuzha farm would be necessary.
to gather the optimal seeds of around 2000 as it was calcualted for an acre but its actual is around 1.5 acres thus another 2000 live seeds , not 2000 at the time of purchase but 2000 that will grow to complete another 8 months.

3rd August
Floating dead bodies contine to haunt me, after a hour or so if i reappear after cleaning there would be new and today there were around 65 thus overall toll is above 250.

4th August
There were 13 dead fishes floating, by evening the toll for the day reached 16.

5th August
There were around 30 dead fishes by the end of the day.And I was determined to change the tank and that work progressed as i pulled out buckets of water and emptied outside.

I had initially taken out some fishes may be less than 200 (a very bad estimated) after that i counted and had around 600 fishes into the new tank.

6th August
There were only around 11 dead fishes thus may be the number has gone down.I did not dig deep into the bottom of the tank to search for disappointment.

7th August
There were around 2 dead fishes.

8th August
There were again 2 dead fishes.Water has turned dark.

9th August
I did not find any new dead fishes but by now water is pitch dark as i had been feeding them with extract of groundnuts.

During these few days when i hadn't blogged about the fish count primarily to avoid counting them and be in despair,during one of these days a kingfisher was spotted around the nursery of fishes.


15th August
There was around 7 dead fishes.

16th august
There were around 5 dead fishes, but fishes were quickly eating the feed today.

17th augsut
around 8 dead fishes were floating around there

18th august
around 5 dead fishes were floating there,i have not succeeded to bring an end to this,it would be fine if i were to drop these into the quarie pit,bigger fish eating these smaller ones is a reality but they may not eat all of these in a day.Whatever is left behind is still a profit.


22nd august
About 5 fishes were floating

23rd august
There was one float

There was a kingfisher moving around.

27th august

There were in all around 30 floats, after the tank was covered with palm leaves.

28th March 2010
After really long , as i had stopped posting the count of dead fish which floats and disappoint me.
I had decided to do a clean up of the tank and i emptied the tank and initially i was scared that there would be only around 5 fishes as the water level went down as we siphoned the water out of it and fishes began to appear and caught them in successive attempts and finally numbers rose to 240 in all.There were 3 of them which were around 7 inches long  probably 2 were of katla and one of  grass carp.

and ofcourse there was casuality in the excercise. 7 dead .