Raising carp, page

Introduction
A friend of mine started doing this in preparation for SHTF, and he's doing well with his little flock for a minimal amount of effort and investment. Carp, koi, goldfish, or whatever other names you can find for these animals, are a good fish to keep because they do not require much, and are reasonably good to eat.

How to do it

Newly hatched baby fish are called fry and when they are finger size they are called fingerlings. With a little extra time and care you can have fingerlings to put in your rice paddies and to sell to other farmers. Here is a way to produce common carp (Cyprinus carpio). You will need two ponds, a spawning pond and a nursery pond. Spawning is when adult fish breed and lay their eggs. A spawning pond is a pond where fish can breed and lay eggs. The spawning pond is also where the eggs will hatch into fish fry.

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Habitat

In the wild, lakes and ponds go through climate changes. Koi carp can exist in freezing waters but prefer warmer water between 82F and 84F degrees. If you put a heater in your pond, koi carp will be active all year long. Water in the koi carp's natural environment should be a hard water, with high levels of minerals and slightly alkaline with the PH of 7 to 8.5. In the wild, carp like dirty water but for water gardeners and koi keepers, clearer water is preferred in order to see the fish. It is difficult and expensive to keep pond water crystal clear.

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What to feed them

The common carp is an omnivorous feeder, which means that it eats pretty well everything – both plant and animal-based. There are some that say the carp is in fact the "pig of the pond" because it digs around on the bottom of the pond in the mud looking for anything it can find to eat. It also gobbles whatever is floating about in or on the water. Carp will devour anything from microscopic plankton and oxygenating water weeds, to worms and the larvae of insects.

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Summary
They'll eat almost anything, they're easy to spawn, they actually like dirty water, and they deal with a wide variety of temperatures. Who could ask for a better fish to raise? My friend that's raising them is getting by with using old planters on his deck as makeshift "tanks", and so far they're thriving. I'm considering building a few ponds in the back yard next summer for a self sustaining domesticated food source. Happy fish farming!

reply to post by TheLieWeLive

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No I don't but I remember seeing them on Discovery several times.

Recipe for carp:

Scale and gut carp. Place a brick in the gut cavity, along with chopped onion. Brush the skin with melted butter.

Wrap fish in tinfoil and bake in oven, or on barbecue. Fish is done when it flakes apart easily with a fork, about ten minutes.

To serve: remove brick from gut cavity. Discard fish. Eat brick.

JK, but carp is near inedible. Trout or perch in cold water, tilapia in warm water, will grow fast and taste much better.

Combine fish farming with hydroponics, and you have AQUAPONICS.

Aquaponics for the win! You can have free, healthy food forever!

reply to post by CaptChaos

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In other words you don't like carp? They make up 14% of the food fish farming industry so they must not be too inedible.

reply to post by Evolutionsend

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LOL! I didn't know anybody actually liked carp, but this is a survival thread, so Carp beats grubworms and crickets by a mile!

I have about an acre and a half pond behind my house. It has perch and bluegill, and a handful of big mouth bass. Next spring we are going to try and stock the bass and add some catfish. I'm rigging up a fish feeder on a timer next weekend. There are two decent inflows, and one little stream outflowing, and the opposite side of the pond is on public land, so anyone can fish and get my stock. Luckily though, I rarely seen anyone over there fishing.

reply to post by getreadyalready

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Precisely! If a group of carp can live on a deck in some old planters while eating crackers once a day, they can probably live almost anywhere. I'm actually going to build a real ecosystem for them and start raising them in the back yard. Not for eating, just for looks, for now.

reply to post by Evolutionsend

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My dad has been doing this for a hobby for several years now. The largest carp is almost a meter and a half.

I can say that you can spoil carps. If you do so they become more vulnerable to diseases and other problems.

If you harden them from start to end they are very, very easy to keep.

Especially temperature/food wise.

reply to post by oldshooter1979

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I remember eating "sucker fish" as a kid, and those are a lot like carp. They're not the best tasting thing either, but if you cook them right they're very tolerable. Maybe even good.

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