It is not just terrace gardening which is popular in Bengaluru. The terrace ornamental fish farming too is becoming a hobby among fish-breeding enthusiasts in the Garden City.
“This is part of the urban aquaculture where small and high-end ornamental fish varieties are bred in small containers on the rooftops by using the natural sunlight,” explains D. Seenappa, head of the Fisheries Department in the University of Agricultural Sciences-Bengaluru. According to him, there are a few hundreds of such fish-breeding enthusiasts who have taken to terrace ornamental fish farming in the city.
Most of these enthusiasts use broken tanks, package materials or other discarded containers for fish farming. “All that they need is a rigid structure. They use even hard package material as a box and cover its inner surface with polythene sheet to turn the structure into a waterproof container,” Dr. Seenappa says.
Apart from turning waste materials into containers, they also adopt natural method of supplying manure. They mix cow dung and coconut cakes with water stored in the container. When this is exposed to sunlight, planktons will grow within five to six days, he says.
Once this process is completed, the fish are let in. It is possible to rare 100 fingerlings in a 500-litre container as each fingerling requires about five litres of water. Normally, small ornamental fish varieties such as platys, mollies, sword tails and guppies that are colourful are preferred for terrace fish farming.
These fingerlings cost 50 paise to Re. 1 each, Dr. Seenappa says. Within 60 to 75 days of being let into the container, the fingerlings attain the marketable size of 1.5 to 2 inches. One would get an average income of about Rs. 800 from a 500-litre container in 60 to 75 days even if the survival rate is 80 per cent (i.e., 80 out of 100 fish survive) and they sell at an average price of Rs. 10 per fish, he says.
According to him, terrace fish farming is taken up more as a hobby rather than as a commercial practice as of now, though it pays well.
For details, contact the Fisheries Department of the university on 080-23515644.
Small and high-end ornamental fish varieties are bred in containers on terraces by using natural sunlight
