Mr. King Cofie Faska, a Catfish Consultant has charged catfish farmers to adopt healthy farming practices to produce healthy fish for consumption.
“Catfish has a lot of nutritional value for the benefit of the human body,” Mr. Faska said.
He noted, however, that improper rearing could affect its nutritional value and create health complications.
Mr. Faska was speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview in Tema, said it was easier and cheaper to maintain a safe environment than to manage the outbreak of disease because of unhealthy practices.
He said fish grow better, reproduce effectively, and have a higher survival rate if the water quality was good and the pond was also not overcrowded.
He said feeding was one of the most important things to consider as it required knowing the right amount of feed and cautioned against the use of chemicals to make the fish grow faster.
He added that catfishes consumed household foods like rice, bread, and vegetables from three months old, and that was one sure way of making household catfish rearing less expensive.
Mr. Faska, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Faska Farms, said rearing catfish could be done according to one’s capacity as it depends on the number of fingerlings to start with.
He noted that large-scale rearing would provide an additional source of income to the households as they could also sell some of the fish to interested buyers.
“Rearing catfish is not that capital intensive, because it depends on the number of catfish one is rearing, if you are rearing 500 fingerlings, it’s not that capital intensive but from 10,000 pieces and more is a bit capital intensive,” he stated.
Mr. Faska, however, expressed concern about the cost of fish feed which he described as a major problem saying that the price of feed increases every week in recent times, and called for government intervention.
