I missed the Catfish Truck!
There is a truck that comes thru here from Dunn’s - and it’ll be here in town tomorrow morning early 7-8am - but I just found out about it tonight, which means I haven’t had a chance to rush temporary quarters together for the catfish. Sigh. But… it’ll be back thru in 6-8 weeks and I’m now on their mailing list - next time I’ll be ready and will get those fingerlings. At .45 each, I’ll only spend $25 or so for 50 of them which should get me started. I can get more next year and soforth to stagger the harvest and keep lotsa cats in the tank until they start breeding. I do have several large containers to put the cats in temporarily - but would much rather put them in their final tank so I’m happy that I missed the truck this time around.
I’ve planned out the rack for the taro bucket-lo’i system. The 2′ wide buckets will sit three-abreast in rows about 20 buckets long, all 2′ above the floor on a frame so that I can run the plumbing underneath and have a crawl-space to maintain it - that way I can maximize the floor-space for this system. With the drain system coming out the sides I’d have to space the containers with enough room for the plumbing, wasting valuable space. I’ll get creative with split ADS pipe inside the buckets to control the drainage appropriately, and will have a water-depth regulator comprised of a few sections of vertical PVC on the inner drain pipe - remove a section and the level of the water lowers. Add the section back, and it gets deeper until it drains into it. This’ll come in handy when I plant young keiki into the sandy mud and want to keep the water only an inch or so deep until the taro takes and starts growing enough to increase the depth. And… it’ll be handy if I ever convert the tank to an upland barrelponics system - remove the vertical PVC pipe altogether so the water level goes all the way down to the horizontal section that drains out the bottom.
And the 8′ front-to-back 12′ wide and 4′ high (and deep) catfish tank will have a 4-6′ wide cover over it running the full 12′ width of the greenhouse and tank so I can put plants up there too. Sun-lovers like my pineapples and lemongrass will reside up there, plus other plants like plumeria and ti too. A little ladder will be built into the wall of the tank so I can get up their easily. Having plants up there will also increase the insect action in the area of the tank - with more insects falling into the water below to feed the catfish. It’ll also be kinda neat sitting up on the plant-shelf with feet dangling into the water while I toss in grasshopper, crickets and mealworms to the hungry catfish…
As I implement these plans, I’ll be sure to photo-document the process and finished product and put together an article about the project.
Stumble it!