The delight of every farmer is seeing his produce bear fruit, in the case of fishing, to grow healthy. Finally building a fish pond, though a local one was my dream come true, but what I never foresaw was the challenges that lay ahead. It first started with my inexperience. The man whom I hired a pond from requested I give him $100 and I was left with just $30 after setting up the place. I decided to take the risk and learn through my experience, fortunately, about 500 of them I was able to farm and all survived.
The loss I suffered the first year was my inexperience on the dubiousness of the fish buyer. They were people whom my landlord connected me with, not knowing he had made arrangements with them to use a faulty scale. I lost about a million naira. Felt discouraged but never gave up. I changed location to a new place and this time I had a hard time getting clean water some days and the fishes suffered a fungi infection. Thanks to an old man who told me cleaning the pond with salt could help and that's what I did.
Above is a picture of signs that signifies a fish is suffering a fungi infection. It didn't end there, 200 plus of my fishes were stolen which I discovered was a friend after a few weeks. Also felt discouraged, but didn't give up. I know challenges come, but giving up sometimes shouldn't be one's next thought of action. I made a small amount of money from the remaining sales and decided to change location to this new site. This new pond is set up in a river area , so I do not need to buy water on this site. The challenge I faced here was when the fishes suffered from lack of oxygen due to no rainfall , I lost a few numbers of fishes before rain came. It wasn't easy watching what you breed die, but then all the challenges I've faced only helped me learn and grow.
Now I'm doing better and I'm currently farming about 2000 fishes. Everyday we learn and one thing I'm grateful for is that I never gave up
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